


How to Fix a Broken Heart

by RockSaltAndRoll



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Based on Grey's Anatomy, Doctor!Bucky, Doctor/Patient Romance, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Heart Defects, M/M, Major Illness, Patient!Steve, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Surgery, TW: Blood, heart failure, medical AU, tw: needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-15 06:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 41,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11800326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RockSaltAndRoll/pseuds/RockSaltAndRoll
Summary: Stucky Big Bang 2017 Submission:Falling in love with a patient was top of the list of things Bucky Barnes would never do...until he met Steve Rogers - a good guy with a broken heart that can't be fixed. After Steve's transplant surgery falls through and his bad heart weakens, Bucky and his team try their hardest to keep him alive until they can find a donor. Over bedside picnics and games of scrabble, Bucky fights against time to save the man he's in love with before Steve loses his battle.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Submission for the 2017 Stucky Big Bang, based on an idea myself and Shortsighted Owl came up with over two years ago.
> 
> As always, Kudos is appreciated; comments are appreciated even more xxx

__

“ _You got nothing better to do than sit here with me?”_

_“I'm fine right here”._

 

(art by [alishawinky](http://alishawinky.tumblr.com))

 

****

 

"Dr Banner!"

Everyone looked up at the sound of Director Fury's voice; all eyes turning towards the imposing hospital administrator as he walked towards the gaggle of doctors hanging around the nurses' station in the Cardiology ward. 

Dr Bruce Banner, head of Cardiothoracics, remained nonplussed as he glanced up from the surgical notes he was perusing. He was a man in his early forties with tightly curled salt-and-pepper hair and glasses that he was forever adjusting. To the outsider, Bruce Banner was seemingly quiet and mild-mannered, but those who worked with him knew he could have some bad reactions to stress. Despite this, he was a genius with a reputation as one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the country, if not the world. Banner was an asset to SHIELD Hospital and an honour to work for.

"Director? What can I do for you?"

"Good news," replied Fury. "We have a heart for Steve Rogers."

At the nurses' station, two pairs of ears tuned in to the conversation just as everyone else went back to their tasks. 

Third year surgical residents Natasha Romanoff and Bucky Barnes were your typical surgeons; always looking out for the best cases and the coolest surgeries. It wasn’t so much a rivalry that they had between them. If anything, since Bucky’s recent transfer to SHIELD from another hospital, he and Natasha Romanoff had formed a kind of partnership; filling each other in on new patients and sharing out the best cases between them. It had worked incredibly well for them both so far, and they had the most well-informed interns in the hospital. Bucky and his partner in crime glanced at each other, grinning before tuning back into their boss's conversation. 

"That's a relief," Banner breathed, rubbing the back of his neck. "I was worried we wouldn't find a match in time."

Fury nodded.

"The heart is in Twin Falls, Idaho. They have a team heading into surgery now to start the harvest and a plane waiting at the airport to take you there."

Banner rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head apologetically.

“Not me, Director – I’m not good in flying pressurised tin cans.”

“One of your residents, then…”

Bucky didn’t even get the chance to open his mouth before Natasha had bounded forward with unbridled enthusiasm, her red hair bouncing around her shoulders.

“I’ll go!” she volunteered; her body almost vibrating with excitement.

Bucky couldn’t help but smile at her. They hadn’t really known each other all that long, but he understood that Natasha Romanoff was a talented surgeon with drive and determination, and a compassion that she tried to keep hidden most of the time. He liked her; and even if he didn’t get the transplant, Bucky was pretty sure there was something else Dr Banner would want him to do today.

Fury and Banner exchanged a look, and then Banner nodded in agreement.

“Okay, Natasha will go to Idaho for the heart. You’ll be my eyes in that theatre, Dr Romanoff – watch them like a hawk.”

“Yes, sir!” Nat replied.

“I mean it,” Banner stressed. “I want that heart to be in the best condition it can possibly be. Steve Rogers deserves the best we can give him.”

With a nod of acknowledgement, Natasha bounded away, leaving Bucky alone at the nurses’ station.

"I'll get the patient called in," Banner said as he carefully put away the chart he’d been holding. "Thank you Director Fury."

Bucky Barnes straightened as Fury shook Banner's hand courteously and wandered off, leaving Bruce Banner to turn his attention to the remaining resident.

“Dr Barnes.”

“Yes sir?”

“With Natasha in Idaho for this harvest, I want you to take care of our patient when he gets here,” Banner said. “Take the next hour or so to review his notes. Make sure you know everything that you need to; make sure your interns are clued in – Natasha’s interns too.”

“Of course, Dr Banner,” replied Bucky.

A frown of concern etched onto his brow, Bruce Banner placed a steady hand on Bucky’s shoulder and looked him seriously in the eye.

“This guy is special, Barnes,” he murmured. “He’s been a patient of mine at least ten years, and a patient at SHIELD for even longer than that. Despite all the odds, he’s still alive and we finally have a new heart for him. He’s been waiting for this a long time Barnes. Take good care of him.”

“I will,” Bucky replied.

It wasn’t unusual to see Bruce Banner emotionally invested in a patient. The man took his job seriously; he took his patients seriously and treated every single one like they were special…but he’d never outright said it before.

“Okay,” said Banner with a heavy sigh. “I’ll get the OR booked.”

Bucky nodded as he watched his boss retreat down the corridor towards the surgical wing; muttering to himself. He liked Banner a lot, but honestly, the guy had some strange quirks.

“Sam?”

The nurse behind the desk looked up from the computer as Bucky said his name.

“Uh huh?”

“Can you get me the notes for Steve Rogers, please? As soon as you can?”

Sam Wilson’s face lit up.

“Steve?” he repeated. “He’s finally getting his heart transplant?”

“Yup.”

“It’s about time,” Sam replied, happily.

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“It seems like everybody knows this guy.”

“Oh yeah, we know him,” Sam laughed. “The man has had, like, a hundred surgeries over the years to repair his heart but they all fail eventually and then he’s back in again. He’s stubborn as a mule but he’s got a great sense of humour. Great guy.”

“Oh he’s a character all right,” announced Natasha, popping up behind Bucky again with her jacket over her left arm and a transplant cooler in her right hand. “You’re either gonna love him or you’ll hate him.”

Sam nodded in agreement and Bucky grinned.

“I can’t wait to meet him. Should I call him and get him down?”

“No, no, I’ll do it,” Natasha said as she shrugged on her jacket. “I’ll call him from the cab on my way to the airport. We go back a few years so…I kinda want to be the one to tell him.”

“Then go,” Bucky said with a grin. “Get in the damn cab, Romanoff! Let’s do this.”

She beamed at him; standing up on tip-toes to give him the smallest peck on the cheek before turning and all but running from the cardio ward; narrowly avoiding collision with a resuscitation trolley. Bucky tried not to laugh as he turned back to Sam.

“I’m gonna go round up my interns. Will you let me know when our patient arrives?”

“Sure thing, man,” replied Sam. “I’ll get those notes sent to you right away.”

“Thanks, Sam – you’re a doll.”

“Yeah, I know!”

Bucky threw one last charming smile at the nurse and picked up the phone to page the six junior doctors in his charge today. He was excited about this case already and he just knew his interns would be too.

 

****

 

Steve Rogers was in the middle of a dream involving two dozen glazed doughnuts and a polar bear when the sound of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ invaded his sleep and brought him into consciousness with a groan of reluctance. Face still buried into his pillow, Steve thrust a hand out and scrabbled around for his ringing phone, knocking a bottle of water to the floor before his fingers finally closed around the vibrating rectangle.

“What?” he muttered in annoyance into the phone. “What can you possibly want from me at this time of the morning?”

“Steve?” answered a familiar female voice. “It’s Natasha Romanoff from SHIELD Hospital.”

Steve finally pulled his head from his pillow, suddenly much more awake as he fought against his covers to sit up.

“Dr Romanoff! Sorry if I was rude, there. I…uh…I was still asleep. What can I for you?”

“Well, I’ve got some news for you, Steve.”

He could almost hear her smiling on the other end of the phone, and Steve’s broken little heart began to beat just a little faster with hope.

“Don’t tell me: you’re quitting surgery to become a world-class assassin?”

“Nah, that’s scheduled for next year,” Dr Romanoff replied without missing a beat. “I’m actually calling you from a cab on the way to the airport to get on a plane that’ll take me to Twin Falls, Idaho where they’re currently performing an organ harvest.”

Steve’s tired heart almost skipped a beat.

“They found me a heart?”

“They found you a heart, Steve,” she replied.

He felt like he was floating as he sat up in his bed, hardly daring to believe his ears.

Steve Rogers had been sick his whole life. Born with a hole in his heart wall that allowed the backflow of blood, Steve Rogers had been through countless operations through infancy, childhood, and adulthood to close it; but his heart muscle was weak and every patch job had ended up failing in time. His heart was now too damaged; too covered in scar tissue for them to fix it anymore, and he’d been on the donor list for quite some time. Unfortunately for Steve, he had one of the rarest blood types in the country, and until his heart failed again, he hadn’t thought he’d be on the top of that list for a new one.

He hadn’t prayed since his mother had died – the good little catholic boy having disappeared along with her – but he had hoped. Now he had a chance.

“When do you want me in?” he asked, finally finding his voice.

“As soon as you can get here,” Natasha replied. “Just remember not to eat or drink anything – they’ll start the surgery before I get back from Idaho to reduce the time the heart is still.”

Steve grinned to himself.

“Yeah, I know the drill by now Dr Romanoff. This will be my twentieth operation or something.”

“I know you do,” she replied, fondly. “I’ll see you when you wake up, Steve.”

“Thanks, Dr Romanoff,” he murmured.

Steve’s heart was pounding and he willed himself to calm down. The last thing he needed was for his heart to break down or give up on him when he was this close to getting a new one. Taking a few deep breaths, he made a mental list of things he should pack as he summoned the energy to get out of bed. With any luck, this would be the last time he’d have to do any of this. He was getting a new heart.

 

****

Bucky was used to dealing with three surgery-hungry interns, but having to deal with six was pushing his limits just a little further than he would have liked.

SHIELD was a teaching hospital, which meant that residents like him were put in charge of a handful of freshly graduated doctors, straight out of medical school. Even though they were grown-ass adults, they all acted like teenagers; every single one of them wanting to run before they could crawl; all of them just desperate to get in on a big, exciting surgery like this one.

Natasha’s interns were bigger brats than his own, but then Nat was scarier than Bucky and ruled them with an iron fist. Bucky had Billy Kaplan and Teddy Altman who were smart and competent, and thought they were keeping the fact that they were dating completely secret when in actual fact, the whole hospital knew. His third intern was America Chavez – tenacious and loud-mouthed, he was sure the girl would make a terrific surgeon if she could just be a little less blunt about delivering bad news.

They huddled outside of the patient’s room with Lang, Cho, and Shepherd – Nat’s interns – all whispering excitedly to each other as he arrived just behind Dr Banner. The Head of Cardiothoracics already looked a little stressed as he pushed through the huddle and into the room.

“Steve,” he said, adjusting his glasses as he addressed his patient. “How are you doing?”

Filing into the room behind his interns, Bucky Barnes pulled up short. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected when he saw Steve Rogers. As he’d read the extensive file of medical notes earlier, Bucky had envisioned somebody big and strong at first, and then had imagined the patient to be weak and frail from all the operations and the constant need of supplied oxygen. What he saw sitting on the bed, was neither of the above.

A young man sat cross-legged on the green hospital bedcover, thick-lashed blue eyes looking at him keenly from behind heavy-rimmed, oversized glasses. He was obviously small in stature and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, but somehow looked tough enough to weather multiple heart surgeries. Black skinny jeans, Converse, blue plaid shirt, and black beanie made him look a lot younger than twenty-eight, but it was the smile that Bucky noticed most – quirked up at one side like he was observing everything around him with a tint of irony.

“No offense, Dr Banner,” Steve Rogers replied in a voice that was deeper than Bucky had expected, “but I’m not a big fan of hospitals. It takes something pretty special to get me in here.”

His blue eyes slid from Banner and rested on Bucky; his mouth curving up just a little more. Bucky Barnes blinked at the scrutiny.

“Well, hopefully we won’t need to drag you in much more after today,” replied Banner, gently. “Dr Romanoff is on her way to get your heart right now.”

With a deep breath, Banner gestured to his resident.

“This is Dr James Barnes and his team. They’ll be in charge of your care, pre- and post-op.”

“Okay,” murmured Steve; his eyes still lingering on Bucky’s face.

Bucky Barnes cleared his throat and straightened a little before turning to the interns.

“What do we know about Mr Rogers?”

They all drew themselves up like kindergarteners, stopping just short of thrusting their hands into the air; hoping to be picked to respond. Before he had a chance to pick, however, Bucky was interrupted by that surprisingly deep voice.

“Single, Cancer with an Aquarius rising, loves animals…”

“Steve!” Dr Banner chastised, pinching the bridge of his nose as though warding off a stress headache.

“Well, he asked,” murmured Rogers; amusement showing in his blue eyes.

The interns stole glances at each other and concealed their giggles behind clipboards as Bucky felt heat rise in the back of his neck; a slow smile spreading over his face. Steve’s fair eyebrows arched upwards as he grinned; his teeth snagged gently on his lower lip.

“Dr Kaplan,” Bucky said eventually.

A slight young man with neat dark hair and hazel eyes looked up from his clipboard, giving Steve a shy smile before beginning.

“Steve Rogers, age 28: admitted today for a heart transplant, necessitated by a congenital heart defect and weak heart walls that make it impossible to repair.”

“What kind of heart defect are we talking about? Dr Chavez?”

A woman with wild curly hair and fierce eyes straightened up. Despite trying hard not to look, Bucky noticed that Steve had barely even glanced at either of the interns; his eyes still studying Bucky with a lot of amused interest.

“Mr Rogers…”

“Ugh, please,” Steve interrupted with a grimace. “Just…Steve is fine. No ‘Mr Rogers’ here.”

America looked to her superiors for confirmation and, at an encouraging nod from Bucky, continued.

“Steve was born with a ventricular septal defect – a hole in the wall of his heart between the ventricles that allows the oxygenated blood in his heart to mix with deoxygenated blood. Although he’s had several operations throughout his life to patch and repair the defect, his heart walls keep tearing especially after periods where it’s had to work harder than normal.”

“You have no idea how much fun that is,” Steve interjected, dryly.

Around him, the interns grinned.

“Dr Lang,” continued Bucky, picking on one of Natasha’s interns. “What pre-operative treatment needs to be done in this case?”

The ponytailed girl looked up in surprise, recovering quickly as she smoothed down her hair and clutched her clipboard to her chest.

“We need to take bloods and a get a urine sample, and make sure the patient’s chest has been disinfected before surgery.”

Dr Banner gave her a satisfied nod.

“Do you have any questions, Steve?”

Those blue eyes flickered from Bucky to Banner, and back again.

“Not about the surgery,” he murmured with amusement.

“In that case,” replied Dr Banner, “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Dr Barnes and his team.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Bucky grinned to himself as Dr Banner left the room, rolling his eyes to the heavens at his flirting patient.  It wasn’t an usual thing for hospital staff to be hit on by patients and their family members, and Bucky Barnes was well aware that he wasn’t exactly unfortunate looking. Normally, it was just shrugged off, except that Steve Rogers was unequivocally likeable and, if truth be told, Bucky didn’t feel like shaking this one off at all.

“Dr Altman,” he said, turning to his last intern. “Can you see to Steve’s pre-op bloods, please?”

“Sure, Dr Barnes,” Teddy replied, enthusiastically.

Steve Rogers tilted his head gently to the side, causing a lock of straw-blond hair to fall adorably in front of his blue eyes.

“See ya around, Dr Barnes!” he called as Bucky left the room, unable to hide his grin.

Damn, but why did his patient have to be exactly Bucky’s type?

 

****

 

The interesting thing about life, Steve thought, was how it could throw curveballs at you when you least expected it. For example, he hadn’t woken up that morning expecting to be called into to SHIELD for the heart transplant he’d been sure he’d never get. More than that, after years of dealing with Dr Bruce Banner and the tenacious Natasha Romanoff, Steve hadn’t at all expected to have the gorgeous Dr Barnes walk into his room.

The man had been heart-stoppingly beautiful: tall and broad-shouldered; blue eyes and dark hair swept back from his face; a chiselled jaw and a smile to die for. If Dr Barnes had ever felt like a change of career, he would have made a killing as a model, and as far as Steve was concerned this was shaping up to be a pretty good damn day.

Except that now Dr Barnes has gone and Steve was playing the part of a pin cushion as the poor intern in charge of taking his blood work failed to hit the vein for the sixth time in a row.

“I’m sorry,” muttered Dr Teddy Altman as Steve winced.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied, cheerfully. “I love being stuck with needles. Honest.”

The intern glanced guiltily at him and Steve couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Steve was used to interns, and more than that, he was used to being a learning tool for them. He’d been in this hospital so many times he’d lost count, and his rare condition always meant he’d be surrounded by a whole bunch of freshly graduated doctors who had next to no practical experience. Steve didn’t mind so much – everyone had to start somewhere, but by this point he was just longing for Teddy to get the vein.

“SAM!” he called enthusiastically, spotting the nurse as he walked past Steve’s room.

Sam Wilson – Steve’s official favourite nurse – flashed him a charming, toothy grin as he backtracked and stuck his head around the door of Steve’s room.

“Hey man,” he greeted Steve. “I hear they have a heart for you.”

“You hear correctly,” Steve replied with a grin.

He still couldn’t quite believe it was finally happening. His old heart had failed so many times over the years and he’d had so many surgeries to fix it that he’d lost count. After the last operation, Dr Banner had put Steve on the transplant list; afraid that the muscle couldn’t take any more repair work with the scar tissue encroaching into the space inside the ventricles. Unluckily for Steve, his blood type was B Negative - the second rarest blood type in the country, and healthy donor organs didn’t come up as often as they might want them to. The fact that they’d found a donor at all was kind of amazing to Steve.

Clapping Steve on the shoulder, Sam smiled warmly at him.

“That’s awesome man. How are you doing?”

Steve shrugged.

“It’s going fine, except that Teddy is making a pincushion of me,” Steve said, throwing an apologetic look at the poor intern beside him. “Sorry, Teddy.”

Sam frowned slightly as he looked over at Steve’s arm.

“Steve has no good veins in his right arm, Dr Altman,” he said. “For somebody who has serious circulation issues, those veins like to stay deep. If you come around to this other side, I’ll show you his good vein…”

“You sound like a vampire,” Steve replied with a snort of amusement.

He watched, wincing slightly as Sam tightened the tourniquet around Steve’s bicep and ignored the numbing sting of Sam’s fingers as he tapped the skin lightly to encourage the veins to surface. Finally locating a decent vein by the crook of Steve’s elbow, Sam handed the needle back to Teddy.

“You want to go in as close to the surface of the skin as you can. Slide, not stab.”

“Sam is a pro,” Steve proudly announced to Teddy as the sharp sting of the needle pierced his skin and slid into the vein.

His friend grinned, shaking his head slightly.

“It’s just practice. Dr Altman will get it in time.”

Teddy Altman threw the nurse a grateful smile and leaned over to grab his first vial.

“So, Sam,” Steve said, cheerfully. “What’s the deal with that gorgeous new Dr Barnes?”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up and Teddy hid a smile.

“Barnes? He’s an asshole.”

Steve’s stomach sank slightly.

“Really?”

“Nah,” replied Sam with a chuckle. “I’m just messing with you. He’s fine.”

Steve’s stomach began to float gently back to where it had been and he fought down a sigh of relief.

“Why?” Sam asked with a quizzically raised brow. “You interested?”

“I might be,” replied Steve; a mischievous grin slowly spread across his face.

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Oh my god. You’ve been flirting, haven’t you?”

Steve’s grin just grew wider, and Sam threw Teddy a desperate look.

“Dr Altman, has he been flirting? He’s been flirting, hasn’t he?”

“Outrageously,” Teddy murmured; glancing up from his second vial.

On the bed, Steve burst out laughing and shook his head.

“Oh, Teddy,” he replied. “You’ve not seen outrageous yet, son!”

The intern smiled at him as Sam chuckled.

“Oh, I am not sticking around for that!” he exclaimed, giving Steve’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “I’ll see you later, Steve.”

“See ya!” Steve called after him.

Alone with Dr Teddy Altman, Steve let out a slow, deep breath which caused the intern to glance up from filling the collection of small glass vials with Steve’s blood. His blue-green eyes immediately lowered as Steve turned his head.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Steve said with a sigh.

Teddy blinked, but kept his eyes down.

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re thinking: why is a guy like me – small, skinny, dependent on prescription meds, heart about to give out at any minute – why am I wasting my time flirting with hot doctors when I obviously don’t stand a chance in hell, right?”

Dr Altman finally looked up again from his vial.

“Actually, I wasn’t thinking that,” murmured Teddy. “But,” he continued, thoughtfully, “now that you’ve brought it up, why do you?”

Steve looked at the intern as he covered the needle mark with cotton and pressed down on it firmly to staunch the bleeding. He’d been asked this question a few times before and the answer, as far as Steve was concerned, was pretty simple.

“I used to be the quiet guy,” he began. “I never really dated – not through high school or art school, but I always believed that the right person for me was out there somewhere; I just had to be patient and wait till they came along. Except, my heart had other ideas – I almost died a few times and I still could go at any point. My heart could fail in the next couple of hours while I’m waiting for my new one; I could die during surgery; my body could reject the heart once it’s been put into my chest. Absolutely anything could happen – life is too short and I didn’t want to be the guy who waited and let a chance pass me by. So I promised myself that I’d test the waters and put myself out there whenever I came across somebody I was attracted to…even if my chances are zero.”

Teddy looked at him; head tilted to the side as if he was contemplating Steve’s words. It had been hard for Steve to come out of his shell – to go from the guy who everyone mostly ignored or overlooked, to the guy actively trying to get others to notice him. Mostly, he just got a polite brush off and never bothered them again, but on a very rare occasion, the reaction was pleasant.

Dr James Barnes had been one of these surprisingly pleasant people who had been taken aback with Steve’s forwardness, but not given any sign of discomfort or disinterest. In fact, the look in Dr Barnes’ eyes had definitely been one of interest. Either way, it had been enough to convince Steve to try again the next time he crossed paths with the gorgeous doctor.

“I guess I understand where you’re coming from,” Teddy finally responded, picking up his vials and placing them all in a marked baggy.

Steve grinned at him.

“You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Oh, I definitely think you’re crazy,” replied Teddy with a laugh, “but I think I’d do the same thing if I were you. You’re right – life is too short.”

Steve decided in that moment that he liked Teddy Altman, despite the young doctor having stuck Steve with needles all morning. Teddy gave Steve a rueful smile as he picked up Steve’s blood work.

“I have to get this to the lab,” he said with an apologetic shrug.

“No, problem,” replied Steve.

He began to roll the sleeves of his shirt back down as Dr Altman waved at him as he backed out of the room. Steve wasn’t usually the biggest fan of interns. Too many of them thought they were God’s gift when they knew nothing at all about the practical applications of medicine. It was nice to be surprised once in a while though, and he had the feeling that Dr Barnes’s interns were a good bunch. He didn’t think he’d mind this team at all…especially not if he got to see more of the gorgeous Dr James Barnes.


	2. Chapter 2

Waiting was always the worst part.

Steve had done this so many times in his life now, it was almost as though waiting for an operation was as natural was waiting for a latte. In the past, his mother would have been there with him, just like she had been since Steve’s very first surgery; but Sarah Rogers had been dead a few years now and this was the third time Steve had done this alone. It was worse without somebody there to help him pass the time; to distract his mind from the multitude of things that could go horribly wrong. He had to content himself with the window, watching the shadows on the wall dance as the wind gently blew the trees outside this way and that. He wished he’d thought to bring his sketch pad.

It took a while for Steve to realise that he wasn’t alone in his room. It was strange – like a sudden shift in the air and the feeling of eyes on him; studying him.

“Hi,” he murmured to the newcomer.

“Steve,” replied a man with a familiar Brooklyn lilt. “I thought you were asleep.”

Steve ignored the heart monitor he was attached to as it started to beep more rapidly, betraying the way he felt as he turned his head and watched Dr James Barnes walk into the room.

The beautiful doctor smiled at him as he checked the machine by Steve’s head and Steve managed a smile back. The man really was gorgeous, but that wasn’t all the reason why Steve felt so attracted to him. From the second Dr Barnes had first entered Steve’s airspace, it was like Steve had been drawn to him – his kind eyes; the way he treated his interns with respect; the amused smile on his face when Steve had flirted with him.

It had never really been in Steve’s nature to put himself out there. Sure, he’d stick up for other people readily enough but when it had come to something Steve wanted for himself, he’d found it hard to say so. It had taken the realisation that he may not make it to his next birthday for him to do something about it – to feel the fear and the anxiety and do the thing anyway. The fact that Dr Barnes hadn’t shut him down immediately gave Steve that little glimmer of hope.

“Nah,” he murmured, watching Barnes’ hands as he pressed a few buttons on the heart monitor. “I don’t sleep in hospitals. I’m scared I’ll never wake up again.”

Barnes gave him an encouraging smile and squeezed Steve’s shoulder gently. The heat from his palm seeped through the thin cotton of the hospital gown and warmed Steve’s skin; the weight of his hand, comforting.

“I've been waiting for this a long time, you know?” Steve continued; looking up at his doctor. “You'll open my chest, take my heart and replace it with another…”

“Well, not me personally,” Barnes replied with a grin, “and not just another heart - a better heart.”

Steve sighed; his brow furrowing slightly.

“What if something goes wrong?”

Dr Barnes turned away from the monitor and perched on the side of Steve’s bed; his hand still warm and heavy on Steve’s shoulder as he found Steve’s eyes.

“Don't be nervous. Dr Banner is an incredible surgeon. You're getting a new heart today – just keep thinking of that.”

“Yeah.”

Barnes smiled and stood; the comforting hand suddenly gone and leaving Steve’s skin to grow cold once again. Steve watched him as he moved around the bed and began to adjust the saline IV that was slowly dripping through a tube and into Steve’s veins. Blue eyes flickered from the IV, to Steve, and back again; that beautiful, perfect mouth curving up at one corner.

“What?” Barnes asked eventually.

Steve took a deep breath. He knew his chances with such a beauty were slim to none, but that was the thing about slowly dying – it kinda gave you a free pass to try.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

James Barnes’ eyebrows arched upwards.

“What if I say no?”

Steve grinned and turned his head slightly, looking at the ceiling.

“Well…I’ll hold my breath which will stop my heart. You’re right here, so you’ll be charged with my murder and you’ll go to jail. Lifetime in prison being loved by a big Norwegian guy named Thor.”

Steve turned back towards Barnes and smiled innocently. The doctor’s face was a delight to watch – transitioning from surprise to delight to mischievous, all in a second.

“So my choices are homicide charges or inappropriate personal questions from my patient?”

“I know,” Steve murmured; the corner of his mouth turning up a little more. “It kinda sucks to be you right now.”

Dr Barnes paused, considering his options before throwing Steve a wicked grin and going back to the IV.

“Hold your breath,” he replied. “I’ll take my chances with Thor – I can do muscle studs.”

Nothing could have prepared Steve for that response. If he was honest, Steve had expected nothing more than a nervous laugh and then a polite brush off. This, however, was delightful – Dr James Barnes’ blue eyes sparkled with mischief; he was intelligent and playful, completely unafraid of Steve’s brand of humour that most people found abrasive. Steve Rogers may have fallen in love within that split second.

“Wow, you’re hard to blackmail,” Steve laughed, “and heartless! So cold and heartless.”

Barnes grinned at him before picking up Steve’s chart and giving it a quick glance over.

“What do you want to know?” he asked.

Steve settled back against the pillows again, still grinning; eyes searching his face for a moment before answering.

“Are you single?”

Barnes started to laugh and Steve was definitely in love. The man laughed with his whole body; eyes crinkling at the corners as he folded in on himself slightly; shoulders shaking with mirth. Steve thought he might happily trade a brand new heart if it meant he could make James Barnes laugh again and again.

“Yes,” Barnes replied, eventually.

“Good,” Steve murmured.

“Good?”

“Yeah,” Steve replied. “Good. It means I don’t have to fight anybody for you.”

Barnes grinned.

“What makes you think I’d want you to fight for me?” he asked, lightly.

Steve gently scoffed.

“Hello! You are in love with me!”

“Am I?”

“Yeah,” Steve replied, loving the way that Barnes’ head shook gently from side to side as he spoke, as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “It’s not your fault. I mean, I’m smart but not a know-it-all; Confident, but not an asshole about it; I’m funny; I’m really nice; I love animals…and I just know that you find this slightly blue, Smurf-like thing I have going on to be _really_ hot.”

Bucky burst out laughing again.

“It’s cyanosis,” he replied, chuckling.

“I am a total catch,” Steve continued; delighted that he had Bucky laughing again. “You know if you can get around the weak, failing heart and all.”

Barnes bit his lip, grinning widely as he processed Steve’s monologue. Shaking his head again, he leaned into Steve with a dramatic sigh, steadying himself with his hand on the bed frame by Steve’s head.

“You’re right,” he murmured, jokingly. “I’m so in love with you.”

Steve’s breath hitched slightly, the heart monitor behind him beginning to beep a little more rapidly again. It was stupid, really – they’d only just met but those words…the proximity of Barnes’ face to his...it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room and Steve was getting light-headed and breathless. Barnes’ eyes looked even bluer at this distance, alternating between looking at Steve’s mouth and his eyes as Barnes dragged his teeth over his lower lip. The air between them crackled and sizzled, and Steve couldn’t pull away from this unexpected electricity.

“It’s a shame,” Barnes continued, his voice quiet and raspy. “Seeing as I’m destined to be with Thor and all…”

The spell was broken.

Barnes pulled away slowly, his hand releasing its grip on the bed frame by Steve’s head as he straightened, absently scratching the back of his neck as he glanced away. Steve let out a nervous chuckle as he found his breath again.

“Damn it,” he murmured. “You got me good, there.”

A soft, huffed laugh escaped Barnes’ lips as his eyes flickered back to Steve in the split second before heavy footsteps outside the room announced the arrival of Dr Banner who walked in with his head down; still reading through the notes he was carrying.

The man already looked a little frazzled; curly hair sticking up at the back from where Banner had been absently tugging at it. Taking a deep breath, Steve pushed the vision of James Barnes’ lips from his mind and smiled.

“Bruce Banner,” he announced. “My favourite cardiothoracic surgeon.”

Dr Banner placed the file of notes down onto the table at the foot of Steve’s bed and gave him a strained smile.

“I’m your only cardiothoracic surgeon, but thanks.”

Steve chuckled gently. Banner had been his surgeon for ten years now and he trusted the man completely. When your heart was literally in the hands of another, you had to trust that they would fix you and bring you back.

“Are you ready for this, Steve?” Banner asked.

Steve let out a shaky breath.

“As I’ll ever be, Dr Banner.”

Bruce Banner nodded, sagely.

“I'll be on the phone with Dr Romanoff during the organ recovery. We want to make sure the heart stays viable – that it isn't damaged while the other organs are perfused. We'll have you in the OR, and if it is a go, we start the procedure before she even gets back.”

“Sounds good to me,” Steve replied, sounding a lot brighter than he felt.

If he was honest with himself, he was scared as all hell. Fixing the heart he had was one thing. Removing it completely and replacing it with another was something else entirely.

Dr Banner exchanged a glance with Dr Barnes before nodding again.

“Okay, I’ll see you again soon Steve.”

“Bye, Dr Banner. Dr Barnes?”

Steve called out to the younger surgeon as he went to follow.  Barnes stopped in the doorway and turned to Steve with an expectant look.

“Yeah?”

 “I'm getting a new heart.”

Barnes smiled, beautiful and charming.

“You're getting a new heart,” he replied, softly. “I'll see you in an hour or so – and Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me Bucky.”

 

****

 

Steve Rogers somehow looked much more frail in his hospital gown than in his street clothes; lying in the bed with the blue blanket covering his legs and his straw-blond hair fanned out across the pillow. Bucky stood at the nurses’ station, listening to the heart rate monitor’s rapid beep from Steve’s room and hoping it wouldn’t get any faster.

Steve’s heart was not at all in good shape. Since birth, he’d had a hole in the wall of his heart between the two lower chambers that pumped blood to the lungs and other parts of the body. Every time surgeons had patched up the hole, it hadn’t taken all that long before the weak muscle tore in a new place and the problems started all over again. Now, Steve’s ventricular septum was covered in scar tissue and still degrading, allowing the backflow of oxygenated blood back to the lungs and preventing enough oxygen reaching the rest of his body. It meant that Steve was cold, constantly tired, and his skin took on a slightly bluish tint especially around his lips and the tips of his fingers.

Bucky smiled to himself as he remembered Steve’s joke about being a Smurf. Natasha had been right – the guy was a character and oh, but Bucky liked him. He knew that he shouldn’t; knew that he should shut it down right now, but Steve was just so playful and Bucky would be damned if he didn’t love the game. It was as though Steve Rogers had his own gravity – his sarcasm and blue eyes pulling Bucky in fast. He had to snap out of it; had to stop it before it got out of hand, no matter how much he wanted to let it go on.

The shrill ringtone of Bruce Banner’s phone cut through Bucky’s thoughts and he snapped back into the present as six interns appeared from nowhere and crowded around him to hear the news from Twin Falls, Idaho.

“Dr. Romanoff?”

Banner put the phone on speaker and placed it on the counter of the nurses’ station so they could all hear.

“Dr. Banner,” replied Natasha on the other end of the phone.

“What are we looking at?” Banner asked.

Bucky heard Natasha sigh.

“The donor is on 25 mics of dopamine. They started him on five mics of dobutamine thirty minutes prior to arrival.”

Banner swore under his breath, both hands flying to his hair and beginning to tug restlessly at it.

“Are they trying to kill my heart?” he muttered, irritably. “What is the CVP?”

“Central venous pressure…?” Natasha trailed off, obviously looking to the transplant team for clarification. “Ten.”

“Mean arterial pressure?”

“Close to 80.”

Bucky watched as Banner straightened and turned on his heel, tugging absently at his hair as he mulled over the information. Next to him, one of the interns leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“Is that not good?”

Bucky glanced to find Billy Kaplan hovering over his shoulder, concern etched onto his brow as he watched Banner’s pacing.

“The MAP is too high,” Bucky replied in a murmur. “They’ve pumped the body with dobutamine to keep the heart going while they take out the other organs but now it’s putting too much unnecessary stress on the heart.”

“Shit…” Teddy muttered.

The interns shifted restlessly as they waited for Bruce Banner’s decision, watching him pace back and forth in front of the nurses’ station while Natasha had a murmured conversation with the transplant team on the other end of the phone.

“Dr Romanoff,” Bruce said eventually, making his way back to the phone.

“Yes, sir?”

“I can live with a CVP as low as five and a MAP about 60. That heart must be off dobutamine, and tell them to get the dopamine back down to ten mics. I want them to hang another two units of blood too.”

“Right away, Dr Banner,” Natasha replied.

Bruce sighed heavily as he ended the call and looked at Bucky with worry etched onto his face.

“What do you think?” Bucky asked.

Banner shook his head.

“Transplant surgeons are not heart surgeons,” he replied, wearily. “They know how to take the organs out, but they don’t really give much thought into how we’re going to put them in again.”

“Is the heart ruined, Dr Banner?” piped up America Chavez.

Bucky looked up and surveyed his interns. Teddy and Billy both looked about as worried as Bucky felt, while the rest wore a look of annoyance mixed with frustration, as though they were worried that the surgery wasn’t going to happen and they would lose the chance to scrub in or watch from the gallery. Interns were a tenacious breed.

Sighing heavily, Banner rubbed the back of his neck.

“Hopefully not,” he said. “Dr Romanoff will call again when they’re ready to take out the heart. With any luck, the drugs will be out of the donor’s system and we’ll be good to go.”

Bucky’s own heart didn’t know if it was more concerned or hopeful; seemingly stuck between sinking and floating in his chest. If the heart wasn’t viable…if they couldn’t do the transplant…

“What do we tell our patient?” he asked.

Bruce glanced over his shoulder towards Steve’s room and sighed again.

“Tell him there’s no definitive word yet. We want him to get the healthiest heart we can find.”

Bucky nodded, trying to chase away the feeling that there may end up not being a heart at all.

 

****

 

Steve hated it when they whispered. Hospital staff only whispered when there was bad news and his doctors had all been talking in hushed tones for hours now. He could see the nurses’ station from his bed; see the gaggle of interns as they crowded around Dr Banner’s phone; see them all casting glances over their shoulders in the direction of his room.

He’d known something was up when Teddy had come into his room wearing an encouraging smile that didn’t reach his eyes, telling Steve that they were still waiting on definitive news. That had been two hours ago and since then the hushed tones and worried glances had grown more frequent.

“You're stalking me,” Steve brightly hailed Bucky Barnes as he appeared in the doorway of Steve’s room. “You're a stalker.”

The corner of Bucky’s mouth quirked up as he crossed his arms over his chest. Steve sighed inwardly as he watched Bucky walk up to the foot of Steve’s bed. Nobody in the world should have looked as good in blue scrubs as that man did.

“Well, can you blame me?” Bucky replied.

Steve’s broken heart sank as he realised Bucky wasn’t meeting his eye. All the whispering has been an omen.

“So it's bad?” he asked.

Bucky’s shoulders straightened as he lifted his head and finally looked at Steve.

It just wasn’t fair. It had been his turn – after years and years of illness and surgeries and missing out on life, Steve had finally been given a chance to live the way he should have been living for all this time. He had deserved this.

 “I didn't get the heart?”

It wasn’t real until Bucky said it. Steve could see it in his eyes and in the way he was standing, but still he needed to hear Bucky say the words otherwise some part of him would still hold onto a faint glimmer of hope.

“You didn't get the heart,” replied Bucky; his voice cracking even thought it was barely more than a whisper. “Dr Romanoff found some fairly extensive coronary artery disease.”

Steve nodded and looked towards the ceiling, squeezing his eyes shut to prevent the sting in his eyes from turning into a flow of tears.

It had started out as such a good day. He’d been walking on air from the minute Natasha Romanoff had called him and told him about the heart; and the day had only gotten better after meeting the beautiful James Barnes. Now it had all come crashing down around his head, and the one heart he’d been eligible for was lost to him.

“You have time.”

“Liar.”

Steve managed a weak smile and Bucky smiled back at him.

“Fine,” Bucky joked. “There's no time.”

“Now, that's just spiteful,” laughed Steve.

A large, smooth hand wrapped around his and squeezed gently. Steve opened his eyes to find Bucky by his side, holding his hand; it’s comforting warmth seeping into Steve’s ice cold skin.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispered.

Steve managed a weak smile.

“It’s not your fault,” he replied. “All it means is that I go back home and wait for the next one, right?”

“Right,” Bucky murmured.

Neither of them stated the obvious – the fact that Steve’s blood type was one of the rarest in the country and the chance of a second heart appearing in time was slim. It wouldn’t do to dwell on that. Instead, Bucky Barnes ran his thumb over the back of Steve’s hand in small, rhythmic movements and Steve welcomed the warmth and the comfort in silence until Teddy Altman appeared with Steve’s discharge papers.

The intern looked about as heartbroken as Steve felt, and he managed a weak smile as Teddy gave his shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. There wasn’t anything anybody could say that could help him feel better about the situation and they all knew it. It was time for Steve to go home.

“I’m gonna leave Teddy to discharge you,” Bucky murmured.

He stood up, still holding Steve’s hand and Steve didn’t want him to let go. He didn’t want that comforting warmth to disappear and leave him cold and alone again.

“I’ll see you, Steve.”

“Yeah,” Steve replied as Bucky’s hand finally slid from his. “I’ll see you.”

 

****

 

It was well after the end of Bucky’s shift when he was presented with a large Starbucks latte. After long, difficult days like this, Bucky often found that sitting in the hospital atrium helped him gather himself together again, even at this time of night. He was sitting in one of the more padded seats in the waiting area when the coffee appeared under his nose, and he looked up to find a tired, pissed off Natasha looking down at him.

“He didn’t get the heart,” Bucky said miserably as he accepted the cup from her.

Sighing, Nat sat down heavily next to him.

“I know,” she replied. “It sucks. He’s a good guy, James. He’s such a good guy and he has a bad heart, and we almost fixed him today, but…”

She trailed off and Bucky found that all he could do was nod in agreement. The donor heart had been bad and that was nobody’s fault, but it was still a cold comfort. Every day, doctors saw people walk away with new organs and some of those people may not have deserved them in Bucky’s opinion – people who refused to take care of their bodies; people who abused their families; people who’d killed another in a car accident yet walked away with a new organ.

When it came to being a doctor, you had to treat everybody equally, despite your own thoughts or beliefs on the matter, but when you had somebody like Steve Rogers – somebody good who really needed his surgery…

Bucky just wondered at the lack of fairness in the world.

“He is a good guy,” he murmured.

Natasha shifted in the seat next to him; taking out her ponytail and letting her wavy red hair fall to her shoulders.

“You liked him?” she asked.

“Yeah,” replied Bucky, softly. “I liked him a lot.”


	3. Chapter 3

The weather in New York for the past week had been just awful. The constant rain caused the dampness to seep into everything and Steve had spent the entire time cooped up in his apartment, wrapped in blankets to ward off the cold that chilled him to his bones and the burning in his lungs. Worse still, it meant that getting out was almost impossible. With his heart the way it was and the added complication of being severely asthmatic, Steve had to get his groceries delivered to his apartment and couldn’t set foot outside of the door until the weather changed. He hated being shut indoors. On the one hand, it meant that he got a lot of work done but he longed to sit in the park for a while and breathe fresh air into his lungs.

On the eighth day of the torrential downpour, Steve awoke in the morning to find that the rain had eased up to a thin drizzle. Even the sky had brightened to a light grey instead of the imposing heavy black clouds that had cast their shadow over Brooklyn for over a week. He knew that he should wait; that he should stay indoors and gage the weather from the safety of his apartment, but Steve was like a caged animal – itching to be outside again and in the free air.

Stuffing his sketchbook and pencil into his backpack along with an inhaler and his wallet, Steve pulled on his warmest, padded jacket and trusty black woollen beanie and left the apartment. He wasn’t planning on going far – just down to the park for an hour or so, then maybe to his favourite diner around the corner for a cheeseburger and milkshake. It had felt like an age since he’d been outside and around people. The loneliness had been eating him up.

Steve felt elated as he took the steps at the front of his building two at a time, his Converse causing a splash as he landed in a shallow puddle. The thin haze of rain coated the sleeves of his jacket with tiny water droplets but Steve didn’t care; happily adjusting his backpack as he began the five minute walk to the nearest park.

Pink cherry blossom littered the streets and collected in the gutters, rolling along on the small tide of water that ran off into the storm drains. The spring had always been Steve’s favourite time of year, even if it did bring with it Steve’s multiple seasonal allergies. Once he was doped up on antihistamines, it wasn’t so bad.

He hadn’t even reached the park before that thought was gone from his mind. Steve felt the tickle in the back of his throat mere seconds before his chest started to grow tight, and he cursed his body as he stopped on the corner of the street and began to dig through his backpack for his inhaler. There was a small window in which Steve needed to take his medication before it turned into a full blown asthma attack.

Unfortunately, he missed the window.

Panicking as he scrabbled through his backpack, Steve felt as though his lungs were in a vice; lights dancing in front of his eyes as he began to wheeze; fighting for breath. It happened too fast, the attack taking over him completely as he dropped to the ground; hearing nothing intelligible in the concerned voices that surrounded him and the faint screech of sirens in the background.

 

****

 

Bucky had been halfway through a huge plate of the cafeteria’s best mac-and-cheese when his pager went off at his waistband. Sighing heavily, he put down his fork and checked the screen; eyebrows shooting up.

“It’s the ER,” he mumbled around his mouthful to Natasha. “They have a patient on the way with heart problems.”

“And they paged you?” Nat replied, amused. “Why not me? I’m totally better than you are.”

“In your dreams,” joked Bucky.

Natasha grinned and slurped up the last of her strawberry milkshake.

“That’s okay,” she said as Bucky pushed back his chair. “I’m just gonna stay here and finish your lunch for you.”

“And here was me, thinking you might box it up for me so I can eat it later.”

Natasha snorted and reached across the table, grabbing Bucky’s abandoned plate and pulling it towards her.

“In your dreams,” she called after him; grinning as she picked up the fork and dug into the cheesy pasta.

Rolling his eyes, Bucky took off at a jog as his pager buzzed again.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered under his breath as he manoeuvred around the crowds. “I’m coming.”

SHIELD’s emergency room wasn’t more than a five minute walk through the hospital and the time could be drastically reduced by speeding up to a slow run. Bucky arrived at the triage station just as his pager buzzed a third time.

“I’m here,” he announced, slightly out of breath. “Dr Barnes – I was paged for an incoming?”

The nurse looked up from her paperwork and blinked at him.

“The heart patient?” Bucky prompted.

The nurse was opened her mouth to respond as the doors the ER banged open and Bucky heard the whoop of the ambulance siren as it pulled in.

“They’ve just arrived,” she replied, already talking to Bucky’s back as he took off in the direction of the ambulance.

Seconds later, his stomach plummeted as the ambulance doors swung open and he caught a glimpse of familiar straw-blond hair.

“Patient is Steve Rogers, a twenty-eight year old male with a long-term ventricular septal defect and severe asthma, suffering here with breathing difficulties and a fast, irregular heart rhythm,” said EMT Kate Bishop with her right hand clasped around an oxygen mask, keeping it in place over the patient’s face as the gurney bumped down onto the pavement.

Bucky accepted the PCR notes that Kate passed him with her free hand and scanned them quickly before glancing at the patient.

It was definitely his Steve - white as a ghost; his skin taking on the slight greyish-blue tinge of deoxygenation and sweat beading on his brow around the halo of straw blond hair; his eyes closed and his chest heaving with exertion. He looked sick and frail; stick thin arms and visible ribs under his sweat-soaked t-shirt.

“Carotid pulse is one-oh-six but decreasing in strength on inhalation; breathing is laboured with a definite wheeze and we’ve been assisting with oxygen,” announced Clint Barton; the other half of the paramedic team.

Bucky stared at Steve as he jogged along next to the gurney, his mind trying to process everything as quickly as possible. It had only been a couple of weeks since he’d seen Steve last; when Steve had been brought in for a heart transplant that had fallen through at the last minute. He’d hoped not to see Steve as a patient again for a good long while, but his broken heart must have already been failing. All it took was an asthma attack to get him back here, looking like he was on the verge of death.

“Has he been responsive?”

“Not since we arrived on scene,” replied Clint with a shake of his head. “I know this guy though – brought him in a few times. He’s one of Banner’s patients.”

“I know, Bucky murmured. “He was in just a couple of weeks ago. I treated him…”

Clint and Kate glanced at each other.

“So, where do we put him, doc?” asked Clint, eventually.

Steve made a noise under his oxygen mask, something halfway between a weak cough and a wheeze; and Bucky finally snapped back to reality.

“Trauma Room One. I need an EKG done and he needs continued oxygen, and some IV corticosteroids. Can somebody page Dr Banner? Tell him I’ll be bringing Steve Rogers up to cardio as soon as we have him stabilised; and can we page my interns as well, please? Chavez, Altman, and Kaplan; ASAP.”

It was always amazing how the ER nurses worked together like the cogs of a well-oiled machine. They all knew exactly what to do as the EMTs assisted in wheeling the patient to the trauma room; each nurse taking a job with minimal need for communication as Bucky hurried after them, mentally calculating medication dosages in his head with adrenaline coursing through his own veins.

 

****

 

The lights were too harsh and too bright; the sounds around him so loud that Steve thought his head could explode. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to gather together enough brain power to figure out what was happening; the effort of concentration almost making him pass out again. His lungs hurt – not a fiery, burning pain but more like somebody had stuck a knife in each side of his chest and was now twisting them viciously.

“Steve?”

Somebody called his name and Steve was immediately blinded by a spot of white light.

“Steve, can you hear me?”

The light disappeared, reappeared, and vanished again, causing Steve to groan as he squirmed and squeezed his eyes shut to protect them.

“Steve?”

The voice was male; the accent, unmistakeably Brooklyn. Slowly, Steve peeled his eyes open; flinching at the lights and the noises that grew louder with each passing second. He found himself staring at the face of an angel: a beautiful man with dark hair swept back from his face; a strong, chiselled jaw line, and eyes as blue as sapphires; framed with a blinding and brilliant white light. If this was death then Steve didn’t think it was too bad at all.

The angel smiled.

“Hey. You had me worried for a second there. Its Dr Barnes…Bucky. Do you remember me?”

Steve’s vision sharpened and Bucky Barnes’ face appeared clearly before him. He could never forget that beautiful man for as long as he lived which, he thought dismally, may not be that much longer at the rate things were going.

A large, warm hard stroked back Steve’s sweat-soaked hair from his head and Steve leaned automatically into it.

“You’re in the Emergency Room at SHIELD,” Bucky murmured above the incessant beeping of monitors and machines. “Do you remember what happened?”

Steve remembered the dizziness and his head swimming as his lungs failed to cope with the exercise and his heart tried to work double time to supply oxygen to his brain. He didn’t remember much after that.

“…Shit…” he groaned, closing his eyes again.

The angelic doctor chuckled softly and that large, warm hand moved from Steve’s hair to give his shoulder a gently squeeze.

“I know, pal. I’m sorry, but we’ll fix you up. Once we’re sure you’re stable, I’m going to have you moved up to the cardio ward.”

Steve managed a painful nod and received another squeeze on his shoulder before the hand disappeared, leaving his skin suddenly cold and mourning the loss of Bucky’s warmth. Beside his head, machines beeped loudly and nurses bustled around him, checking his vitals. Steve felt so tired, his limbs so heavy and sapped of all energy. Before long, he gave up on trying to keep his eyes open and gratefully allowed his consciousness to slip.

 

****

 

“What have we got?”

Bucky glanced up from his charts as America Chavez burst through the doors of Trauma Room One; whipping her stethoscope from around her neck and causing her wild curls to bounce. A concerned frown was etched onto her brow as she darted around Bucky and moved towards the gurney and the motionless young man that lay there.

“Steve Rogers. Do you remember him?” replied Bucky.

“Banner’s patient who came in for the heart transplant the other week?”

“Yep.”

He stood back and allowed America to listen to Steve’s chest. The intern’s frown deepened as she moved the stethoscope from right to left.

“That wheeze doesn’t sound good,” she muttered.

Bucky nodded as the doors to Trauma One opened and a dishevelled Billy Kaplan and Teddy Altman burst in. Bucky barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes as he picked up Steve’s chart and passed it to the other interns.

“Nice of you boys to join us,” he said dryly.

Billy rubbed the back of his neck guiltily as he took the chart and looked very hard at it. Teddy Altman glanced at the patient on the gurney and his face dropped.

“Is that Steve Rogers?”

“Yes,” Bucky replied; falling into teacher mode. “Steve is suffering from a severe asthma attack and if you remember, he has a ventricular septal defect and weak heart muscle so that heart is working double time to make up for the oxygen deprivation. He’s tachycardic, so what do you do?”

Bucky had already come up with an immediate treatment plan before his interns arrived but he was required to test their knowledge anyway. Immediately, America Chavez jumped in.

“We need to get his asthma under control,” she said. “A dose of IV corticosteroids to reduce inflammation and restriction of the airways; issue Salbutamol via a nebulizer; and continue with oxygen.”

“If he’s still tachy, then he may need digitalis to get his heart rhythm back to normal,” Billy murmured from the corner of the room.

Bucky gave his interns a satisfactory nod.

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” he told Billy as he took the chart and handed it to America. “Dr Chavez, I’d like you to go with Steve to cardio and get that nebulizer started as soon as possible.”

“Sure thing, Dr Barnes!”

America beamed at him, positively delighted to have been chosen for the assignment. She deserved it, as far as Bucky was concerned – as well as being the first intern to turn up, she’d accurately prescribed Steve’s treatment. The boys looked disappointed, but they’d get their turn in time.

Bucky ran a hand through his hair and looked at Steve again as the gurney was wheeled out. His condition had improved vastly since his arrival at the ER – Steve’s skin had lost its deathly blue pallor and had regained some pinkness, and his breathing was a little more stable. The heart monitor beeped steadily in the background and Steve’s oxygen sats were returning slowly to an acceptable level.

It appeared for now that Steve Rogers had another lucky escape.

 

****

 

Steve’s mouth felt as dry as a desert; his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth and his cracked lips painfully peeling away from each other as he tried to groan in discomfort. His lungs burned and rattled with the dampness left behind by a nebulizer as he inhaled, and with a sudden sinking feeling, Steve knew exactly who he’d find next to him when he opened his eyes.

“I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again.”

Dr Natasha Romanoff stood at the side of Steve’s hospital bed, chart in hand and intently studying Steve’s heart monitor. Steve cracked the tiniest smile behind his oxygen mask.

“Well…you know me. I’m like a bad penny – I always show up.”

Natasha glanced at him; her green eyes betraying her amusement.

“You know, if you like hospital food this much Rogers, I’m pretty sure we can arrange something. Like a Meals on Wheels kinda deal so you don’t have to keep getting admitted just for the cuisine.”

“Yeah, but that just takes all the fun out of it,” Steve joked.

He liked Dr Romanoff immensely. In a world where everyone took one look at him and decided to treat him like some kind of infantile porcelain doll, Natasha was one of the few who royally kicked his ass and didn’t pull her verbal punches. She and Dr Banner were about the only kind of normal Steve ever got in his life and he never appreciated either of them more than at times like this. Steve knew the ass-kicking was coming and he was more than prepared to take it like a man.

Natasha sighed and scribbled her findings on his chart before tossing it onto the empty space on the bed below Steve’s feet and folded her arms across her chest.

“You got lucky,” she muttered.

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” groused Steve, sinking back into his pillows.

The corner of her mouth lifted at one side.

“Jupiter has sixty nine moons, but if you ask most people, they only remember the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.”

Despite himself, Steve smiled behind his oxygen mask.

“You’re right, I did not know that.”

No matter how many times Natasha or Dr Banner berated him about taking more care, Steve couldn’t help but resent his illness a little more. He’d been dealt a shitty hand of cards since birth and he became increasingly pissed off about it as he got older. As a child, his health problems had kept him from enjoying early life: from playing ball with the local kids on the street, to attending school properly. Steve had been in and out of hospital his whole life with one or another of his numerous conditions and so far they had been able to patch him up again and send him home every time, but he knew one day his luck would run out.

A cough from the doorway made both Steve and Natasha look up, and Steve almost forgot to breathe.

“Hey,” said the newcomer with a familiar Brooklyn accent. “How’s the patient?”

Steve didn’t even have to look to know who that voice belonged to. The doctor in question was the man of Steve Rogers’ dreams - gorgeous blue eyes and chiselled jaw and that dreamy dark hair, swept back from the forehead.

Steve tried to ignore the heart monitor that had begun to beep just a little bit faster.

“Still stupid,” Natasha cheerfully announced. “I guess it’s good to know some things never change.”

Bucky smiled from the doorway; wide and beautiful like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Steve cursed himself for being such a mess in front of this gorgeous creature. He was in a hospital gown now but his skin was still sticky from the cold sweat he’d been in on admission, and his hair had to be matted and filthy.

“Well, if it isn’t my favourite doctor,” Steve wheezed; his voice muffled by his oxygen mask. “You didn’t have to go out of your way here to check on me though. Dr Romanoff is okay at this medicine stuff.”

Beautiful Dr Barnes’ eyebrows shot up in surprise and then he began to laugh as Natasha gently slapped Steve on the arm.

“Hey, you should be grateful I’m here,” she replied; her lips quirked up on the right side. “Dr Barnes doesn’t know his ass from his aorta.”

It was evident to Steve that the two doctors were friends. From what he knew of Natasha Romanoff, she was distant and polite to most but loved to give the people she cared about a hard time. Steve felt honoured to be one of those people and somehow it warmed him to know that Dr Barnes was also in this elite club. Bucky just laughed harder, doubling over slightly as he shook his head in mirth.

“That’s just cruel,” he countered. “I’ll have you know that we both went to the same medical school.”

“He’s a terrible doctor,” Natasha murmured as an aside.

Steve tried to laugh but his lungs wouldn’t let him. He was already feeling a little light-headed and giddy from Bucky’s presence, but Steve’s first chuckle reminded him of the burning in his lungs and before he knew it he was coughing; shoulders and chest heaving as both doctors rushed to his aid.

“Easy,” Bucky murmured. “Take it easy – its okay.”

Natasha adjusted Steve’s oxygen mask so he could breathe better but Steve barely noticed as Bucky’s strong hand ran over Steve’s hair; gentle and soothing; his voice calm and encouraging. It was almost like Steve was back in that Emergency Room with everything around him bright and blinding except for Bucky – the point of focus – telling Steve everything would be alright.

“Damn it, Rogers,” groused Natasha, once Steve’s breathing was back under control. “You gotta stop pulling shit like this.”

“Sorry, Nat,” he replied between breaths. “I just like scaring the crap outta you.”

His eyes fluttered closed; body suddenly drained of whatever energy he’d been able to regain.

“Your blood pressure's stable now,” Bucky murmured, glancing at the machine. “Your breathing is improved and the ventricular fibrillation you had when you first arrived is resolved.”

Steve managed a weak smile.

“I like the way you say fibrillation.”

Bucky grinned.

“Fibrillation,” he said again in a more sultry tone.

“Tease,” replied Steve.

Bucky Barnes chuckled softly, his hand still running over Steve’s hair. Steve may have been a little in love with those hands.

“How are you feeling?” Bucky asked.

Steve considered the question for a second. In all honesty, he was feeling like he’d been hit by a steamroller, except it really wasn’t even all that bad because his hair was being petted by the world’s hottest doctor.

“Do you, uh…believe in karma?”

One of Bucky’s eyebrows rose, quizzically. 

“Um…actually, I do, yeah.”

Behind his oxygen mask, Steve grinned.

“I think you might be mine.”

Over Bucky’s shoulder, Natasha Romanoff gave a sound of mock disgust and hurried out of the door, leaving Bucky chuckling gently.

“You must have been very, very good to deserve me,” he replied.

“I must have.”

Steve’s eyelids fluttered again. He didn’t even feel strong enough now to mourn the loss of warmth and comfort when Bucky’s hand slid gently from his hair as he backed away.

“We’ll leave you to get some rest, Steve,” said Bucky; his voice already sounding distant. “I’ll drop by tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”

Steve nodded, or at least he thought he did before he slipped back into his exhausted sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

“Do I have to be worried?”

Bucky started as Natasha cornered him before pre-rounds the next morning. She scowled at him, hands on her hips and looking very intimidating for such a small woman. Bucky held his hands up, defensively.

“Worried about what?”

Natasha’s scowl deepened.

“Don’t bullshit me, Barnes. I’m talking about you and Steve Rogers.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“I…I don’t know what you…”

“I’m talking about the flirting,” Natasha interrupted. “And all that hair-petting, and looking deep into each other’s eyes.”

Bucky felt the colour rise into his cheeks and he nervously rubbed the back of his neck.

“He’s my patient, Nat,” he explained. “He was scared and struggling to breathe, and I was comforting him.”

“Really?” Natasha replied, doubtfully.

“Yes,” Bucky insisted. “It’s called having a good bedside manner.”

Still frowning, Natasha crossed her arms over her chest and studied Bucky carefully.

“So you’re telling me that you don’t like him in that way?”

Bucky flinched. Telling Natasha that his feelings for Steve Rogers were strictly professional would have been a lie. It was more than that and he knew it, but what it was exactly, Bucky couldn’t pin down. Steve was, quite frankly, adorable. He was funny and sarcastic, and Bucky swore he felt ever so slightly giddy when those blue eyes turned on him and that mouth quirked up at the edge. He’d known the guy for all of five minutes and didn’t honestly know a single thing about him other than his illness, but Bucky couldn’t deny the pull Steve had on him.

“Alright,” he admitted aloud. “I confess – I think he’s cute as all hell and I’m flirting, but I promise you it won’t go any further than that.”

Natasha continued to look at him as though she didn’t believe a single word he said. Bucky couldn’t really blame her.

“It’s unethical,” he added.

“Damn right, it’s unethical,” Natasha muttered. “Just…keep the flirting to a minimum, okay? Don’t get too attached. You know as well as I do how quickly patients like Steve can go downhill.”

Bucky looked away; his eyes darting towards the closed door of Steve Rogers’ room.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I get it.”

The truth of it was, Bucky was already concerned with Steve’s condition. He looked at the chart in his hands and re-read the notes from overnight, his brow knotted with worry. The corticosteroids he’d prescribed Steve should have opened up his airways overnight and the asthma medication should have had Steve breathing much better by morning. As it happened, the on-call doctor had noted increased hypertension and a rattling in Steve’s lungs, betraying a fluid build up. Steve hadn’t been off BiPAP all night; still struggling to breathe in his sleep.

The signs all pointed to something much worse than an asthma attack and Bucky didn’t want to take any chances as he hastily wrote up a prescription for diuretics and ACE inhibitors before handing the notes off to the Charge Nurse.

 

****

 

Steve woke to the hustle and bustle of the cardio ward in the early morning, his lungs burning as though there was hot pitch bubbling in his chest; hot and sticky. He hadn’t realised he could possibly feel worse than when he was admitted the day before, but as he lay there in his hospital bed, listening to the heavy wheeze in his lungs that was louder than the beeping machines and the bustling nurses in the corridor, he realised he’d been so very wrong.

He’d had asthma attacks before, and plenty of them. They sucked, to put it lightly – the tight feeling in his chest like somebody had put his lungs in a vice; the exertion of trying to suck in more oxygen than his inflamed bronchioles could cope with; the dizziness and bright, swimming lights and the fear that his next breath could possibly be his last. However once the medication kicked in, Steve’s lungs had always behaved themselves and responded; airways opening up and letting him breathe once again. They usually kept him in a day for observation because of his heart condition, but once they were satisfied that Steve was once again sufficiently oxygenated, they let him go. This time, Steve had a feeling the hospital wouldn’t be letting him go anywhere soon. As far as he could tell, the steroids and bronchodilators hadn’t worked this time.

Blinking, Steve turned his head slowly towards the door, being careful not to dislodge the BiPAP that was assisting his breathing. By the amount of activity, he figured it was pre-rounds and the nurses’ shift change, and he was just thinking that it could be a while before somebody came to take him off BiPAP when a shadow appeared in the doorway.

“Back so soon?”

Steve smiled at the familiar voice. Even without his glasses on, Steve would know his favourite nurse from anywhere. He made a noise in his throat as Sam Wilson came into the room with a trolley laden with IV fluid bags and tubes; stopping by Steve’s bed and giving his shoulder a squeeze before turning his attention to the BiPAP.

“Gimme just a minute here, Steve,” Sam murmured. “We’ll get this off you and onto a nasal canula – see how you manage.”

Steve managed a nod and lay as patiently as he could while Sam unhooked him from the breathing machine. He despised the mask that took up half of his face, creating a seal that made his skin sweat underneath it and prevented him from talking.

“I think you gave Dr Chavez a test of her medical skills during the night,” Sam continued a he set up the tubing for the nasal canula. “You almost stopped breathing a couple of times – that’s why you’re hooked up to this thing.”

Steve frowned. He hadn’t known about any of it – his body obviously too exhausted to alert him after working so hard to keep him alive. Deep down, he knew that something was very wrong this time, but he was going to have to wait for Dr Banner to round on him before he found out what.

“There we go,” said Sam after a while; looping the tubing of the nasal canula around Steve’s ears. “How does that feel?”

“Less restrictive,” Steve admitted.

His voice was raspy and dry; his throat, tight. Steve felt like crap but gave Sam a weak smile anyway.

“Any chance of a glass of water?”

Sam flashed Steve his signature toothy grin.

“What do I look like, your damn waitress?”

“No, but you’d look good in one of those cute little diner dresses,” Steve replied, innocently.

Sam laughed and shook his head.

“You’re twisted,” he said. “I’ll get you something after I hang your IV. Not too much though – your fluid intake is being monitored with them putting you on diuretics.”

“Diuretics?” Steve repeated.

“Hey man, that’s what it says on your chart. I do what I’m told.”

Steve frowned again as he watched Sam take down the empty bag of corticosteroids and replace it with a fresh bag of fluids. He knew he’d get nowhere by pressing Sam about it.

“They’ll round on you soon,” Sam murmured, as though reading Steve’s mind.

“I know,” Steve replied.

Now that he was awake and thinking, Steve was starting to realise how cold he was feeling. Heart and lung problems leading to bad circulation meant that Steve’s body temperature was forever low, and hospitals had terminally thin blankets as well as constant air conditioning. He shivered visibly.

“Hey Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Please tell me the Paramedics didn’t cut my sweatshirt off me when they picked me up yesterday?”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up.

“You cold?”

“Freezing,” Steve admitted.

Nodding, Sam moved to the small closet in the corner of Steve’s room and opened it, peering in.

“I think its okay,” he replied, pulling out a navy knitted hoodie and patting it down.

Steve sighed in relief.

“Is it too much to hope for my hat being in there too?”

Sam grinned as he pulled out Steve’s black woollen beanie and gave it a little shake.

“Anything else I can help his Highness with today?” he joked.

“Just my glasses, so I can point you the direction of the damn door!” Steve retorted as he gratefully accepted the warm clothes and attempted to pull himself up in order to drag his sweatshirt on.

His limbs felt like they were made of lead – so heavy and difficult to move; his lungs burning once again from the exertion of just lifting his arms but he struggled through it, determined to get through it on his own. Finally, he managed to pull the beanie on over his sweat-dirty hair, happy that that it was mostly covered up until he could drag himself to a shower; his last ounce of energy taken up by retrieving his glasses from Sam and putting them on his own face, navigating the nasal canula looped around his ears.

“You good?” Sam asked as Steve collapsed back against his pillows.

“Yeah,” breathed Steve,

He closed his eyes and tried to will away the pain taking over his whole body as Sam squeezed his arm again and wheeled the trolley to the door.

“Banner won’t be long,” Sam called from the door.

Steve didn’t even have the strength to nod as Sam left.

 

****

 

Steve looked much worse than he had the night before when Bucky had left him; shivering slightly under blankets, and wearing a sweater and a hat to conserve body heat. His skin was deathly pale and his lips tinged blue from cyanosis, but somehow Steve still managed to look bright as he pulled himself up the bed with visible effort and smiled at him. Swallowing his concerns, Bucky gave Steve his best reassuring smile back.

“Hey Steve,” he said, gently. “How are you feeling today?”

Blue eyes blinked mischievously at him as Steve cocked his head to the side.

“Much better for seeing you,” he replied; his voice quiet and raspy.

Behind Bucky, the interns looked at each other and grinned, shaking their heads at the slight flirtation. Bucky’s reassuring look melted into a real smile as he laughed at his patient’s tenacity.

“I’m sure it is,” he replied. “But really, how are you?”

He leaned over the bed, squeezing Steve’s shoulder gently. Steve’s eyes dropped momentarily, glancing at Bucky’s hand before giving him a shrug and a lopsided grin.

“Just peachy – that is if you don’t count the fire somebody set in my lungs and that feeling like I was beat up with a sledgehammer.”

“That would have been Dr Chavez,” Bucky joked, innocently. “She’s been known to kick ass from time to time.”

“I knew it,” sighed Steve.

A quick glance over his shoulder assured Bucky that America was taking the joke in her stride; shaking her fist at him whilst hiding a grin and trying to look mean.

“Stop beating the patients with sledgehammers, Chavez.”

“You spoil all my fun, Dr Barnes,” she replied, dryly.

Steve wheezed out a laugh which disintegrated into a cough. Bucky held his breath, concerned a repeat of the previous evening but thankfully, Steve’s coughing ceased after a few seconds and his breathing evened out again.

Bucky bit his lip as the interns crowded around Steve Rogers’ bed; shuffling their notes in anticipation as Bruce Banner walked in and glanced at Steve’s chart with a strained smile.

“Who’s presenting today?”

Tough, wild-haired America Chavez stepped forward; eager and fresh despite having been on call through the night.

“Steve Rogers, twenty-eight years old with a congenital septal defect; admitted yesterday due to a severe asthma attack but he’s had difficulty breathing during the night. I put him on BiPAP somewhere around eleven last night and he’s done better since then.”

Bucky watched Steve’s brow furrow gently as he listened to her. If there was one thing he’d picked up on in his short time of knowing Steve Rogers, it’s that the guy was smart. He knew by now that something was up – none of this was normal following an asthma attack, but still Bucky wasn’t sure enough to say it. He hoped above everything that his suspicions about Steve’s condition would be proven wrong, because if he was right then Steve was fast running out of time.

“How’s his breathing now?” Banner asked America; interrupting Bucky’s thoughts.

“A little junky,” she replied. “There’s a build up of fluid…”

“Are you calling me a junkie, Dr Chavez?” Steve asked, with a grin. “That’s not very nice.”

Bucky’s interns hid their grins behind their clipboards and America rolled her eyes as she tried not to smile. They were all quickly learning that Steve was impossible not to like, what with his swift humour, sarcasm, and his uncanny ability to not give a crap about caking a joke at his own expense. Only Dr Banner remained serious.

“Steve,” he said quietly, cutting through the interns’ titters. “I’m not going to lie to you – this development concerns me. I’m worried that this has less to do with your lungs and more to do with your heart.”

Steve’s smile slowly faded and he glanced at Bucky as he inhaled as deeply as he could manage.

“Okay,” he replied. “So what do we do about it?”

Bruce looked from Steve to America Chavez and nodded at the eager intern to continue.

“We’ve put him on ACE inhibitors, and diuretics to try to counter the fluid build up,” she responded.

“Good,” said Dr Banner with a satisfied nod. “I want Steve’s ins and outs recorded and somebody monitoring him at all times.”

The interns all straightened up keenly hoping to be picked, but Bucky had already made his choice.

“Dr Kaplan, you stay,” he said, ignoring the disappointment on Teddy and America’s faces as Billy beamed happily at him. “Don’t get so excited – you’ll only be sitting here keeping him company for the next few hours.”

“That’s gonna be fascinating for you, Dr Kaplan,” drawled Steve from the bed. “I hope you know some good card games.”

Bucky laughed as he ushered his other two interns out of the room.

“I’ll see you later, Steve,” he said, pausing at the door to look back.

Steve still looked sick and exhausted, but his blue eyes were bright and watching him, that sardonic smile playing over his lips again.

“Looking forward to it…Bucky.”

Biting his lip, Bucky tried not to smile as he left the room. All flirting aside, he was still deeply concerned about Steve’s breathing and by the time he’d caught up with Bruce Banner in the corridor, all traces of amusement were gone.

“Dr Banner, can I talk to you about Steve Rogers?” he asked.

Bruce glanced up from the chart, a frown etched deep onto his brow.

“Of course,” Banner replied quietly.

Bucky drew a deep breath and threw a glance over his shoulder towards Steve’s room.

“I want to start him on beta-blockers and dobutamine,” said Bucky, quietly.

Banner didn’t even blink.

“You think this is heart failure,” he stated.

“Yeah,” replied Bucky with a sigh. “I really do. The overnight build up of fluid in his lungs just smacks of it, Dr Banner; and the asthma meds we gave him yesterday did nothing at all for him. He’s on the top of the donor list for a damn good reason and that’s because his heart has been struggling for a while and we can’t fix it. What if this is a sign that it’s starting to give up?”

Dr Banner looked at him carefully, his brown eyes betraying nothing as he thought over Bucky’s words.

“I think you’re right,” he murmured eventually. “Get a CT ordered for today and get him started on dobutamine and beta-blockers – see if we can get ahead of this and anticipate the next step.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky replied, taking Steve’s chart from Banner with a heavy heart.

He hadn’t wanted to believe that this could be heart failure, but Banner’s reaction had just confirmed all of Bucky’s fears. He needed to order more tests to be sure, and Billy Kaplan would be there monitoring all of Steve’s vitals and stats, ready to call if something took a turn for the worse. Bucky really just hoped it wasn’t as serious as he was starting to think it was. They needed more time.


	5. Chapter 5

“So,” Steve said, conversationally as he used his little finger to smudge the edge of the graphite pencil outline he’d just drawn. “How long have I got?”

Dr Billy Kaplan looked up from his paperwork in surprise and blinked.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Well,” replied Steve. “You’ve been sitting with me for a couple of hours now and every once in a while you glance up from your charts and look at me like you know something I don’t. And whilst I fully appreciate that you’re an MD and likely know a hell of a lot more about a lot of things than I do, I can’t help but get the feeling you know something about _me_ that I don’t know, and I’m less than comfortable with not knowing. So…how long have I got?”

He watched as Billy blinked again and set his charts aside in order to shuffle his chair closer to Steve’s side.

“I promise you,” Billy murmured, “I don’t know anything that you don’t know.”

Steve gave him a rueful smile. He had expected that response if he was honest with himself, but it still irked him. He’d seen the way Bucky had looked during Dr Banner’s rounds – that strained smile and furrowed brow; the new meds he’d been put on since coming off BiPAP. Steve knew something was up.

Sighing, Dr Kaplan leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

“Listen, Steve – you’re a smart guy…you know that you’re at the top of the donor list for a new heart for a damn good reason and that the heart you have isn’t going to stay stable for too long.”

Steve leaned back against his pillows and nodded as he looked at the ceiling. Dr Banner had already voiced his concern that Steve’s current condition was less to do with his lungs and more to do with his heart. He knew things weren’t good, but it scared him more to not know just how not good.

“We’re doing tests,” continued Billy. “We’re monitoring you every single minute of the day. As soon as we know something, you’ll know.”

The young doctor smiled reassuringly but Steve didn’t feel any better about any of it.

“Do you know how long it took for the last heart to come through?” he asked Billy; his voice sounding quiet to his own ears.

Billy frowned.

“The heart you came in for last week that turned out not to be viable?”

Steve nodded.

“My blood type is kinda rare,” he said. “Only eight percent of the country’s population have it and the chances of one of them becoming brain dead and having a viable heart for transplant is…rarer.”

“I know,” Billy murmured.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” Steve continued, peeling his gaze away from the air conditioning vent in the ceiling to look at Billy again; “Spending every day of your miserable existence hoping for somebody to kick the bucket just so you don’t have to. It’s not right. It’s not fair.”

Billy Kaplan looked at his feet. Steve took a deep breath.

“Here’s the thing though – I don’t wanna die. I am twenty eight years old and the only thing I can think of is…I haven’t done enough. There’s more that I can do – more that I _have_ to do in this world before I can leave it. There are more people that need to be helped; more bullies to stand up to; more injustices to be fought against. There’s so much wrong with this world that I want to help put to rights, and the worst thing about it is that somebody else has to die so that I can live. I shouldn’t be hoping for that. Doesn’t it make me a bad person?”

He hadn’t meant to spill all his thoughts and emotions out in one go, but Steve felt as though he couldn’t stop once he’d started. It was everything he’d thought and worried about ever since Bruce Banner had put him on the organ donor list and he’d never had anybody to talk to about it before now. Steve normally kept everything pretty under wraps, but today? Today he was more scared than he’d ever been in his life and Billy Kaplan was a sympathetic ear.

A warm hand covered his and Steve jumped at the unexpected contact. Dr Kaplan was smiling at him.

“Steve…whatever happens, the person whose heart you get will have wanted you to have it,” he said, gently. “These people choose to have their organs donated to others so they can continue to help long after they die. Accidents happen every day and people die no matter how hard we try to prevent it. You’re not so much hoping somebody else will die – more like hoping that if a person does, that they chose to help others live by donating their organs.”

He supposed Billy had a point. Thinking of it that way did make Steve feel less guilty about it even if didn’t change the reality of things.

“I guess if I get this new heart I’m gonna have to go on the organ donor list, aren’t I?” he said with a lopsided grin.

“When,” corrected Billy; “When you get a new heart. And yes, you are.”

Steve had to give the guy credit for his optimism. He sighed and nodded as Billy squeezed his hand; and resolved that, whether or not a heart came through for him, he’d pay it forward in kind. He didn’t know how many of his organs would be much use to anyone in the state he was in, but he had to try. It was the least he could do.

A knock on the door startled them both and Steve’s bad heart began to beat a little faster; the heart monitor betraying him as he looked past Billy Kaplan to find Bucky Barnes standing in the doorway and smiling that gorgeous Brando smile of his.

“Hey.”

 

****

“Hey, yourself,” Steve replied, his face breaking into a grin; all trace of the previous conversation, gone.

Bucky hated himself for eavesdropping. It hadn’t been intentional – in fact, he’d stopped by Steve’s room with the intention of relieving Billy for an hour or so but when he’d reached the door, he’d overheard the conversation and could neither bring himself to interrupt, nor leave. It made his heart break to hear how much of a rotten person Steve thought himself to be, just for not wanting to die.

It was common amongst people waiting for donor organs to feel guilt, but Bucky had never really felt the impact so strongly before. Maybe it was because he liked Steve a hell of a lot – much more than he really should, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Billy, you can take a lunch break,” Bucky said to his intern. “I got this.”

Grinning, he held up a paper bag with the logo of the local burrito bar emblazoned across it. Steve’s blue eyes lit up.

“Aww…you brought a picnic!”

“Well, I can’t have you starve to death,” replied Bucky. “The food in here is pretty dismal and I think you’ve suffered enough.”

He slid into the chair that his intern vacated and smiled as Billy bid Steve a farewell; disappearing with his arms full of charts. Bucky made a mental note to praise Dr Kaplan’s bedside manner later in the day and opened the paper bag; taking out the burritos and placing them on the rolling tray over Steve’s bed. He narrowly missed the sketch pad that Steve whipped away from the warm, foil-wrapped rolls.

“Wow,” Steve murmured as he reached for one of the burritos. “I gotta say, this isn’t exactly how I'd envisioned our perfect first date.”

Bucky laughed.

“Are you kidding?” he replied without thinking. “Do you know how hard I've had to work to get a cute boy in bed before?”

Steve Rogers’ hands halted in their endeavour of unwrapping his burrito, and Bucky felt his cheeks grow warm as Steve’s head tilted to the side; blue eyes watching him carefully as that sardonic smile Bucky liked so much spread across his lips.

“You think I'm cute?” Steve asked with amusement.

Bucky Barnes wished the ground would swallow him whole. He’d sworn to Natasha that he would be professional, but damn it, he was floored when Steve Rogers did this kind of thing.

“Okay. Shut up and eat your burrito,” he muttered; ducking his head as he reached for the other wrap and tried not to notice Steve grinning like a maniac.

“So,” Steve said after he’d taken a bite of his lunch. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Bucky’s eyebrow arched gracefully upwards.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Steve replied, “You have three interns who are on very strict orders to monitor me every minute of the day. The smart thing – from an HR point of view – would be to stagger their lunch breaks and have them on a rotation, but here you are looking after me yourself.”

Steve blinked innocently at him over his burrito and Bucky grinned.

“Obviously, I’m terrible with human resources,” he said.

“Obviously,” agreed Steve.

Bucky laughed.

“Do I need a reason to sit with you myself?”

“No,” replied Steve, “but you brought me lunch…and it would be kinda awesome for me if you did have a reason.”

Bucky leaned back in his chair and shook his head in amusement. He loved the way Steve watched him expectantly; like he _knew_ why Bucky took the lunch shift instead of sending America or Teddy – like he knew, but he was daring Bucky to say it.

“Fine,” he admitted. “I find you to be…a very interesting person that I have a rapport with, and I was hoping to build on that.”

He picked his words very carefully, trying hard not to betray himself. Steve grinned.

“Is that the case?” he asked, chuckling.

Bucky grinned back at him.

“It is.”

“And how would you propose on building up this rapport, Dr Barnes?”

“I dunno,” Bucky laughed. “Just…by talking? Asking questions?”

Steve scoffed.

“That’s boring,” he mumbled around a mouthful of burrito. “How about a game?”

“A game?”

“Yeah, like…that one where I tell you two things – one true, one false – and you have to guess which is which.”

Bucky’s eyebrows shot up.

“That’s a drinking game,” he replied. “If you guess wrong, you have to take a shot.”

Steve shrugged.

“This is a problem, how?”

“For one, I don’t have any tequila,” Bucky replied with a laugh, “and secondly, even if I did, you could not have any.”

“So…we’ll use water,” Steve suggested.

Bucky sat back, considering it.

“I guess we could,” he agreed; leaning over to retrieve the stack of medicine cups from the top of the bedside unit. “And if we use these as shot glasses then I can easily keep track of how much fluid you’re taking in.”

“Wow, that’s sexy,” Steve replied, dryly.

Bucky laughed as he set two cups down on the table and filled them up with water from the room’s jug.

“Okay, you go first,” he said.

Steve’s head tilted to the side, studying Bucky closely before responding.

“Okay – two things about me that may or not be true. The first thing is, I grew up in Queens. The second is, I never knew my dad.”

Bucky grinned.

“Well, I know for a fact you didn’t grow up in Queens,” he replied. “That accent is not nearly nasal enough for Queens – that’s Brooklyn.”

Steve laughed at him

“Did I mention that I’ve never really been very good at lying?”

“Take a shot,” Bucky said, pushing the medicine cup forward with a finger. “What part of Brooklyn are you from?”

“Red Hook,” Steve replied, knocking back the water.

“No way? I’m from Red Hook! Van Brunt Street.”

Steve blinked.

“Richards Street.”

Bucky laughed.

“That’s like, right around the corner from where I grew up. Did you go to school at South Brooklyn?”

Steve smiled coyly and slowly shook his head.

“That’s not part of the game, Barnes,” he said.

Bucky let out a noise of mock frustration and covered his face with his hands. He hated this game. All he wanted was to talk; to get to know who Steve was and what he liked…but he had the feeling that Steve Rogers made you work for it, despite his active flirting. Bucky would put up with it for the time being.

“Okay,” he sighed. “I guess I just gave away that I went to South Brooklyn High, so I guess I’ll say that…I got a partial scholarship to college, but I got into modelling to pay for med school.”

Steve snorted with amusement.

“Okay, that’s fake,” he replied. “I’m gonna go for the partial scholarship as being true.”

A slow smile spread over Bucky’s face as he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“Take a shot.”

Steve’s blue eyes widened.

“No way.”

Actually,” said Bucky as he topped up Steve’s makeshift shot glass and pushed it forward. “That was kind of a half-truth.”

“So, you didn’t model?” Steve asked, picking up the pill cup and swallowing the mouthful of water.

“Oh, I did,” Bucky replied. “I was referring to the scholarship – my parents couldn’t afford college, so I worked hard; played all the sports I could fit into my schedule and got a full scholarship. A modelling agency approached me in my final year and asked me to do a few shoots…next thing I know, I’m putting myself through medical school with a very well-paying side job.”

“Wow,” Steve mused. “You’re a very well-rounded individual, Bucky Barnes.”

“Why, thank you,” laughed Bucky.

Steve flashed him a mischievous grin.

“You’ll have to show me those magazine shoots sometime.”

Bucky laughed harder. His past modelling career was the worst kept secret in the hospital, right up there with Billy and Teddy’s relationship, and Bucky couldn’t have been prouder of himself. Nobody in the world could make him feel bad about any of his former jobs.

“Okay,” he continued as he filled Steve’s pill cup again. “Back to you.”

Steve’s head tilted to the side as he considered his truth and his lie, a harsh wheeze bubbling up in his chest as he inhaled.

Bucky frowned.

“Steve, what is it?”

Steve wheezed again; the heart monitor picking up to a dangerous pace as Steve’s lips turned blue and his eyes grew wide. Bucky was out of his seat in a second, hitting the emergency call button as he dragged the full oxygen mask from the wall and put it over Steve’s nose and mouth.

“Don't panic - just try to breathe,” he said, as calmly as he could manage.

Bucky glanced over his shoulder as Sam Wilson and the crash team appeared at the door.

 “Somebody page Dr Banner!” he called out as nurses surrounded Steve’s bed and the heart monitor went insane as Steve’s blue eyes glazed over.

“Just try to breathe,” he repeated as panic set in. “Just breathe, Steve.”

 

****

 

Steve wasn’t sure how much time he’d lost between the point where his lungs had filled up with fluid, and waking up to a harassed Dr Banner hurrying into his room followed by all three of Bucky’s interns.

“What happened?”

“He had flash pulmonary oedema,” he heard Bucky say. “I switched him to Nesiritide, started Milrinone and increased oxygen.”

“That's a good call, Barnes,” Banner murmured as he picked up Steve’s chart and scanned it.

It was all coming back to him now – the extra oxygen working wonders to clear the fog in his brain. They had been having a really great time together – him and Bucky, eating burritos and doing shots of water; getting to know each other a little better.

All it had taken was a second. One single second from that thick, heavy burn in his lungs to disappear as fluid filled them up and threatened to drown Steve right there in his hospital bed. It had been worse than any asthma attack he’d ever experienced. As used to the feeling of his airways closing up as Steve was, the experience of his own body trying to drown him was something completely different.

The last thing he remembered was Bucky leaning over him, calmly telling him to breathe even as Steve fought for air and his own consciousness. At least he’d made it out of the experience alive thanks to Bucky’s quick-thinking and medical skill.

“It’s bad news, right?” Steve wheezed from behind his oxygen mask.

The interns exchanged looks as Banner put down Steve’s chart again and sighed; pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb.

“It's not good,” he responded. “The fact is, Steve, your heart is failing and you're running out of time faster than any of us anticipated.”

Steve Rogers’ battered heart almost stopped beating. He’d suspected that he was suffering from heart failure – it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been in this territory before, but the way his doctors – the way Bucky – was looking at him, it appeared the situation was far dire than he’d ever thought.

“So what's behind door number two?”

Bruce Banner rubbed the back of his neck.

“Usually in these cases we would consider installing a left ventricular assist device,” he replied. “Unfortunately, with your ventricular septal defect, it’s not going to help you nearly enough.  An LVAD could have kept you going for months…possibly even years until we found a transplant heart, but…”

“A machine?” Steve repeated; his eyebrow arching upwards. “I knew it. You people are trying to turn me into a robot. It's all part of your evil plan to take over the hospital.”

“It's a bridge to transplant, Steve,” replied Banner. “It'll keep you alive while we wait for your new heart.”

“It’s that easy, huh? No catch?”

Usually things that sounded too good to be true were just that, and judging by the way the five surgeons in the room were looking at each other, Steve was sure he was about to hear the biggest catch of them all.

Bucky stepped forward; his face the most serious Steve had seen it since they’d met.

“There are risks, just like any surgery,” he said. “Unfortunately, with your ventricular septal defect, we’re looking at more risks than somebody suffering from congestive heart failure without the added heart defect.”

“What kind of risks are we looking at?”

A muscle twitched in Bucky’s jaw as he held Steve’s gaze.

“We’ll probably have a matter of weeks to find a donor heart,” he replied quietly. “We’ll have to attempt another septal patch before we can fit the device, but after that we’re looking at risks of early right heart failure, blood clots, multiple organ failure...”

The more Bucky spoke, the further away his voice sounded – muted and distorted, like Steve was hearing it from underwater. He couldn’t believe that he was hearing his death sentence.

“You’re not filling me with an abundance of confidence in my chances here, Doc,” Steve replied; glad that the tremble in his voice was disguised by the oxygen mask over his face.

In a second, Bucky was by his side and clasping Steve’s hand between his own as he perched on the side of the bed. His blue eyes searched for Steve’s and held his gaze fiercely; the warmth from his hands saturating Steve’s skin and flowing through his bloodstream to his heart.

“You can’t think like that, Steve,” Bucky murmured. “You’re tough – you’re a fighter and you’ve made it this far with the heart you have. You’ve never given up and I’m not about to let you give up now. We need more time and this surgery will buy you that time.”

Steve blinked at him; the fear in his soul ebbing with every second Bucky continued to hold his hand. He took a slow breath.

“So…if I don’t get the LVAD, how long have I got?”

Over Bucky’s shoulder, Banner sighed heavily.

“At the rate you’re declining – the pulmonary oedema, your oxygen saturation, your heartbeat irregularities – I’d say a week.”

Bucky’s hands tightened around his and Steve let out the breath he’d been holding.

“Okay,” he murmured. “So if I don’t do it, I’m gonna die in about a week; and if I do, I could die now if it doesn’t work, but I get a few more weeks if it does. A few weeks buys us more time…”

“It buys us more time to find a heart, yes,” replied Bucky; his voice as steady and calm as always.

It was like a tether to Steve; like he would just slip underwater and drown if it wasn’t for Bucky’s warm hands holding onto him and his voice quelling the desire to scream till his lungs gave out. Bucky was right – they needed more time. More time to search for a donor, yes; but also…they had just started to get to know one another. Bucky Barnes was the one shining light Steve had in his life right now and he wasn’t prepared to lose that just yet. In fact, he was determined fight like all hell to keep it for as long as possible; to know as much about Bucky as possible.

“In that case,” Steve murmured; managing a weak smile, “let’s do this. I got nothing to lose except my life.”


	6. Chapter 6

Steve felt too drained and weak to draw; passing the time by staring out of the window while he waited for his surgery. Teddy Altman had sat with him for the last few hours, thankfully leaving Steve to stew in silence as he got on with paperwork. Steve’s mind was just so full. He’d always known that he was running on borrowed time with his heart the way it was; always known that the multiple surgeries were just a band aid over a metaphorical bullet hole, and now he’d reached the point where he was hurtling towards the end of the line and there were no breaks.

The worst thing about it all was Bucky. Steve knew he didn’t stand a chance with a guy like him, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to know him better. Bucky Barnes was warm and kind and magnetic, and Steve was drawn to him more than anyone else he’d met in a long, long time. He also couldn’t possibly be romantically interested in Steve Rogers – skinny and sickly with an inappropriate sense of humour, Steve didn’t believe there was anything there to like. The gentle flirtations between them meant nothing to Bucky except a way to communicate with his patient, but still, Steve wanted nothing more than to live through this; to have more time to get to know Bucky even if there was no way they’d be a couple. He’d settle with just having Bucky as a friend.

Bucky had been right – Steve was going to fight death as hard as he could. He wasn’t going to give in easy, even if he felt as weak as a newborn kitten.

“How are you doing, Steve?”

Steve turned from the window as Dr America Chevez entered his room.

“Just peachy, Dr Chavez,” he murmured.

Teddy glanced up from his charts and the two doctors exchanged a look.

“You need to stop doing that,” said America as she adjusted the flow rate on Steve’s drip.

“Doing what?”

“Acting like everything is fine when everyone knows it’s not.”

Steve frowned.

“Would you rather I wallow in misery and self pity?” he asked.

America Chavez sighed heavily.

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

“It’s just,” Teddy piped up, “that if we ask how you’re doing…we really want to know how you’re doing.”

“We need a status update,” America continued. “’Just peachy’ doesn’t give us a good idea of your pain levels or your emotional state. Don’t try to impress us by being flippant.”

Steve huffed and turned his head towards the window again. He couldn’t even begin to explain to either of them how he truly felt at that moment. He wasn’t the kind of guy that complained; preferring to just power through things on his own rather than burden anyone else with his issues. Bedbound in SHIELD Hospital made this more difficult than usual, however.

“My lungs feel like they’re on fire,” he muttered, reluctantly. “It hurts to breathe.”

“On a scale of one to ten?” America asked, picking up his chart.

“Six.”

Dr Chavez raised an eyebrow and glanced at her fellow intern who shook his head.

“A six means it’s more like an eight,” murmured Teddy. “You can’t downplay your pain, Steve.”

“Would you two stop clucking over me like a couple of mother hens?” Steve groused. “My pain tolerance is high, okay. Put it down as a six.”

America shrugged and scribbled the result down on Steve’s chart. He hated this part – the part where everyone tried to contradict him. Steve knew he was stubborn, but he’d been dealing with this for his whole life. No matter what these interns believed; no matter how smart they were or how much they had studied, they couldn’t know for sure how Steve felt and it irked him that they didn’t take him at his word. He couldn’t help but feel like Bucky would have accepted his pain rating without question.

“Okay Steve,” continued Chavez as she replaced his chart. “We’re going to prep you for your surgery now. Are you sure you want to go ahead with this? The risks for you…”

“Are acceptable,” Steve replied, quietly. “At this rate, I’m gonna die anyway so what does it matter if it’s sooner rather than later?”

Teddy flinched visibly as America looked at the floor. Steve sighed, realising that he’d snapped.

“Don’t worry,” he continued. “I’m not being fatalistic, just realistic. You’re telling me that I’m going to die without this surgery, but in the same breath you’re telling me I could die if I do have it. The chances of this surgery working and keeping me alive long enough for me to get a new heart…the chances of it working and even finding a new heart…they’re pretty slim. I’m still going to do this because I wanna take my best chance. If it fails, at least we all know we tried everything we could. I’ll know that I didn’t give up.”

The interns looked at each other again before turning back to Steve.

“That’s fair enough,” she sighed. “I’ve got the consent forms right here.”

She passed over the clipboard that she’d been holding and Steve took it from her, struggling to keep a grip as he adjusted his glasses to read them.

“Hey, Teddy?” he asked. “Any chance you can get me some of those forms for organ donation?”

America’s eyebrows as Teddy nodded.

“Sure.”

“Organ donation?” enquired America. “What do you want those for?”

Steve took a deep breath that sent pain shooting through every inch of his lungs, and grimaced.

“Even if my heart and lungs are no use to anyone,” he said, “if I don’t make it off the operating table today or at any other point, I don’t want it to be for nothing. There’s gotta be some part of me that you can use to help somebody else live.”

Teddy nodded.

“Okay,” he replied, softly. “I’ll get those for you now.”

“Thanks,” murmured Steve, watching as Teddy left the room and America Chavez took his place in the chair by Steve’s bed.

He wished that it was Bucky sitting with him, helping him go through these forms; but Bucky was down on the surgical floor, scrubbing up to assist Dr Banner with Steve’s six hour surgery. Steve just really hoped he’d make it out alive.

 

****

Beyond the glass, the surgical nurses were bustling about the operating room preparing for Steve’s surgery. Bucky’s stomach was in knots as he ripped open a sterile scrubbing brush and went to work on his hands with the strong smell of antibacterial soap filling the air.

Under normal circumstances, Bucky would have been excited to scrub in on such a surgery as this, but it wasn’t so thrilling knowing it was Steve going under the knife. Bucky had hoped that Steve would stay stable; that the impending heart failure would take a slow course and give them more time to find a way to fix him. Life, however, was never fair.

It scared him that Steve was going through this surgery; but the thought of him not going through it scared Bucky even more. As much as he told himself that Steve Rogers was a patient like any other, Bucky knew in his heart that wasn’t true. He felt more connected to Steve than to any other patient he’d had since his first day on the job, and no matter how hard he tried to distance himself; no matter how much he insisted that he could be professional, the more he felt himself slip.

When Steve had suffered the flash pulmonary oedema, Bucky had panicked. For a few seconds, he’d felt himself freeze up; felt the fear of losing this amazing guy that he’d only just begun to know. For a few seconds before his medical training kicked in, Bucky had been just a regular person watching a person he cared about gasping for breath as the fluid in his lungs threatened to drown him.

A knock on the scrub room door startled him out of his reverie as Natasha opened it and walked in, propping herself up against the wall.

“Hey,” she greeted him, quietly. “You okay?”

Bucky took a deep breath and threw her a lopsided grin.

“Why? Don’t I look it?”

Natasha shrugged.

“You look like you’re gonna throw up.”

Bucky laughed.

“That bad, huh?”

Natasha’s lips briefly quirked up into a smile before smoothing out again; her green eyes watching him carefully. It was unnerving sometimes – the way Natasha could watch someone; calculating and studying them; sizing them up before she made her next move.

“I hear Steve Rogers is getting an LVAD,” she said.

“You hear right.”

Bucky carefully scrubbed beneath his fingernails, ignoring Natasha’s eyes boring into him.

“I guess it’s the only thing we could really do,” she continued. “Whichever way you look at it, he’s on borrowed time now.”

Bucky’s hands fumbled and he almost dropped his scrubbing brush.

“What are you getting at, Natasha?”

“Nothing,” Nat replied, carefully. “Just telling it like it is.”

“Well, it’s not helpful.”

He heard her shift slightly on her feet but still refused to look at her. The air between them lay heavy for a moment before Natasha spoke again.

“You need to regain some distance, Barnes,” she murmured. “Going into this surgery with too much emotion isn’t going to help you or your patient. Steve is your patient and he needs you to be his surgeon right now. Not his friend, not his romantic interest…his surgeon.”

“I know that,” Bucky snapped. “And once I walk into that OR I’m going to be his surgeon, it’s just…for a second I’m allowed to be scared for him, okay? Because once I walk in there, I can’t be scared because _he’ll_ be scared enough for all of us. I know that.”

“Okay,” Natasha replied; her voice annoyingly calm.

Furiously, Bucky scrubbed at the skin on his hands; his overzealousness causing them to become reddened by the coarse brush bristles. He hated that Natasha knew that his feelings for Steve were growing more rapidly into something beyond professional or even friendly. It scared him almost as much as the thought of Steve not surviving the surgery…

He jumped as the scrub room door suddenly swung open and Bruce Banner walked in; pausing to look between his two residents – Natasha all cool and collected, and Bucky who was scowling and scrubbing his hands to within an inch of their life.

“Dr Romanoff,” he said carefully. “Are you joining us in the OR today?”

“No,” replied Natasha. “I was just leaving.”

Bucky resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder as she backed out of the door. She would most likely be heading up to the gallery to watch the surgery along with Bucky’s interns; scrutinising every move Bucky made.

“Everything alright, Dr Barnes?”

Bruce Banner looked at him, a concerned frown etched into his brow. On the other side of the glass, Bucky saw the nurses wheel Steve in on a gurney and his heart beat sped up.

“Perfectly fine, Dr Banner,” he replied; finally dropping the scrubbing brush into the stainless steel sink and turning off the water with his elbow.

Holding his hands up in front of him, Bucky moved into the OR and was immediately swarmed with scrub nurses bearing sterile towels, operating gowns, and gloves.

“How you doin’, Steve?” he called, glancing over to the gurney.

“Honestly?” Steve called back. “I’ve felt better.”

Bucky smiled under his surgical mask as a scrub nurse finished tying the operating gown behind his back. Fully dressed for surgery, Bucky made his way to Steve’s side and looked down at his patient. Without his glasses, Steve’s eyes looked somehow bluer; his skin somehow less deathly pale under the yellow surgical lamps and his hair turned to the colour of golden wheat, freed of the black, woollen beanie and spread out over the start white pillow beneath his head.

Without all his extra layers, Steve looked tiny; almost delicate but for the determination set in his face. He looked defiant, as though daring death to just try. Bucky’s smile widened under his surgical mask as Steve looked at him.

“Ready for this?”

“As I’ll ever be,” replied Steve.

Bucky wished his hands weren’t sterile so he could give Steve’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Instead, he made do with touching Steve’s arm lightly with his elbow; following that blue gaze as Steve glanced down to where they connected. Steve let out a shaky breath.

“You’ll be in here, right?” Steve asked as he looked back up.

“The whole time,” replied Bucky. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve nodded and turned his head, blinking up at the lights as the anaesthetist placed a mask over Steve’s face. Bucky watched as Steve breathed in the gas; his eyes quickly falling closed; cornflower blue disappearing behind heavy lids and long lashes fanning out over freckled cheeks. He swallowed hard and took a step back as Dr Banner entered the operating room.

“Alright, team,” Banner said calmly as he was helped into his gown by a scrub nurse. “Let’s give Steve the best damn chance we can.”

 

****

 

The foggy haze of general anaesthesia always left Steve feeling disoriented. He couldn’t remember being brought around in the recovery room after surgery, and he had no idea how long he’d slept except that it was now dark. The lights in the room were out; the only illumination coming from the corridor outside and the moon shining through the shutters at the window.

He could hear the hum of the hospital at night time – the nurses talking to each other quietly; the squeaking of shoes against the polished floor; the beeping and whirring of machines. Steve was riding the morphine high; his body feeling light and floating and mercifully pain free. He had made it.

Steve’s mouth and throat felt drier than Death Valley and he turned his head in search of water. Instead of a jug, Steve’s eyes settled on a figure sitting in the chair by his bed and it took him a few seconds of blinking and squinting to recognise the dark, swept-back hair, strong jaw, and broad shoulders.

He croaked happily, and Bucky sharply looked up from the papers he was reading through.

“Hey,” Bucky greeted him in a soft voice. “You’re awake.”

Steve nodded slowly. He was so thirsty; his throat, so dry. Weakly, he raised a hand and gestured towards his throat. Thankfully, Bucky got the message.

“You want water?” he asked; hands already reaching for the jug and a plastic glass.

Steve gratefully accepted the glass, and less than gratefully accepted Bucky’s assistance with drinking it. He hated being unable to do things for himself, but assured himself that it was only until the grogginess passed. Sighing, he settled back against the pillow and tried to speak again.

“How long have I been out?” he asked, his voice raspy but working.

“A few hours,” replied Bucky. “It’s a little after ten.”

“At night?”

Bucky smiled as he sat back down, nodding. Steve blinked slowly; still groggy. It was hard to think with the morphine in his system.

“So…” Steve said, slowly. “Am I part machine now?”

A small huff of amusement escaped Bucky’s lips.

“The surgery went really well,” he replied. “We did the patch and fitted the LVAD easily enough. Now we just have to wait and see how things go.”

Steve nodded; the sound of his hair rustling against the pillow, loud to his own ears.

“You got nothing better to do at this time on a Friday night than sit here with me?” he croaked.

“I’m fine right here,” Bucky replied; his face serious as he pulled Steve’s extra blanket up a little further. “You just go back to sleep.”

Steve wanted to protest that he’d been sleeping all day, but his body betrayed him; eyelids drooping again and limbs heavy with exhaustion. The last thought through his mind as he fell back to sleep was how happy he was that Bucky Barnes was there with him.

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky woke with a start; disoriented and with a crick in his neck from sleeping awkwardly, upright in a chair. Early morning light streamed through the shutters and he blinked furiously, noticing with dismay that he’d overslept. Bucky hauled himself upright and stopped dead when he noticed Steve sitting up in bed, smirking at him.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Steve said, cheerfully.

The LVAD surgery had been six days ago and it still startled Bucky to see how well Steve was doing. The deathly blue cyanosis had left his lips and fingers, and a little pink had returned to his cheeks, making his golden freckles stand out across his nose. Bucky felt his own face grow warm as he rubbed at the soreness in his neck, and avoided Steve’s eyes.

“Morning,” he murmured.

“You been there all night?”

“Uh…no,” Bucky lied. “I was on call last night – dropped by to check on you about an hour ago and must have fallen asleep.”

Steve’s blond eyebrows arched slowly upwards, as though he could sense Bucky’s lie.

If truth be told, Bucky had been sleeping in the chair beside Steve’s bed for almost a week now.  Even though the surgery had gone well and Steve’s condition was improving, Bucky carried around an awful feeling that it wasn’t going to last and part of him was very afraid of going home in case Steve took a turn for the worse and he wouldn’t be there to do anything about it.

Usually, he set the alarm on his watch to wake him up in plenty of time so he could be out before Steve woke up, but this time he must have forgotten. He couldn’t make that mistake again.

“I had a feeling you were gonna miss pre-rounds,” said Steve; his smirk growing, “but you just looked so comfortable there. You were snoring. I’m pretty sure there was drool…”

Bucky laughed, despite himself.

“I’m sure that was an attractive look.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Steve murmured.

Those blue eyes were studying him again, moving to look from Bucky’s eyes, to his mouth, and back again. It should have been unsettling, the way Steve looked at him, but it was never predatory. It was more like Steve was trying to figure something out about him; searching him. It made Bucky squirm, but in a strangely pleasant way.

“I…uh…I should maybe run and get a shower before my shift starts,” said Bucky, eventually; heaving himself out of the chair with some effort.

“Okay,” Steve softly replied; still watching Bucky’s every move as he left the room.

It was getting increasingly difficult for Bucky to remain professional around Steve Rogers. If he hadn’t have been Bucky’s patient, he knew he would have asked Steve out weeks ago. From those inquisitive blue eyes, to the golden freckles; the playfulness and sarcasm, and the overwhelming tenacity, Steve Rogers was everything Bucky liked in a person and everything he was attracted to.

Steve was doing so much better since the surgery and Bucky knew he needed to stop wasting so many nights sleeping in that chair, but he was honestly afraid. The LVAD would only buy Steve more time – it wasn’t a cure, and Steve desperately needed a new heart. Bucky hoped he’d get one before any complications arose.

Sighing, Bucky leaned heavily against the nurses’ station and ran his hands through his hair. He really needed a decent night’s sleep some time soon.

“You look like crap,” announced Natasha as she appeared at his side with who cups of coffee in hand, passing one to Bucky as he looked at her.

“Thanks, Nat,” he replied, dryly. “You really know how to make a guy feel good about himself.”

Natasha’s green eyes scrutinised his face as she sipped her coffee.

“When was the last time you got some decent sleep?” Natasha asked. “In a real bed?”

Bucky stared hard at his coffee cup. Dr Natasha Romanoff always knew what was going on in this hospital – it was futile to try and hide this from her.

“It’s been a while,” he admitted.

“You know there are other doctors in this hospital, right Barnes?” she said. “I know that you’ve become attached to Steve Rogers in the last couple of weeks, but you’re also not the only one around here who cares about what happens to him and you’re certainly not the only doctor here who is familiar with the workings of an LVAD.”

Bucky squirmed uncomfortably. He knew she was right – there was always at least one of his interns or Natasha’s on call plus at least one resident physician and a team of very capable nurses. If anything happened with Steve’s heart, he was sure it would be controlled but…something still gnawed at him; the feeling that if anything ever did happen to Steve and Bucky wasn’t there, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“Go the fuck home,” replied Natasha. “Get some real sleep in your own bed. You’re no use to any of your patients if you’re exhausted.”

Sighing, Bucky raised the cup to his lips and took a sip of the weak cafeteria mocha, contemplating Natasha’s words.

“I’ll do my best,” he said, eventually. “I’ll go home after my shift finishes. I promise.”

 

****

 

Steve felt as though he was going to go mad if he didn’t spend time with another human being soon. Before the LVAD, he’d had an intern keeping him company every minute of the day in case his heart stopped or his lungs filled up with fluid again. It wasn’t like Steve needed constant conversation or anything, but he was bedbound in a private room and apart from the nurses that popped in every hour to chart Steve’s vitals, he was pretty starved for human contact. It was getting very lonely in this hospital and even pouring his attention into work didn’t help his mood much.

It was around lunchtime when a rap on the doorframe made him jump and look up from inking his panel; face lighting up when he spotted his visitor.

“Sam!” he exclaimed, happily.

“Hey, man,” replied Sam, flashing Steve his trademark grin.”How you doin’?”

Steve let out a long sigh and shrugged.

“Honestly? I’m goin’ crazy here all by myself. I think I’m starting to hallucinate.”

“You’re such a drama queen,” said Sam with a small laugh. “Luckily, I have the cure for hospital cabin fever.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve replied, raising an eyebrow. “You gonna smother me with a pillow?”

“It’s tempting, but no.”

Drawing his hand from behind his back, Sam revealed a small box of Krispy Kreme donuts. Steve’s blue eyes widened in delight and he dropped his pen, stretching both hands out towards the box.

“Gimme!”

“Oh,” said Sam, wiggling the box. “You want these?”

“Gimme,” Steve repeated.

“I dunno Steve, I’m not sure you really want them…”

“Goddamit, Wilson! Give me the donuts or I swear I’ll attempt to get up out of this bed and dislodge the million wires coming out of me so you have hours of work trying to put them right again.”

“Oh man, that’s just cruel!” laughed Sam as he finally relinquished the donuts into Steve’s possession.

With a happy squeak, Steve opened the box and selected the original glazed ring – his absolute favourite donut of all time – and offered the box back to Sam.

“Please tell me you’re sticking around for more than two minutes,” he said as Sam eyed the Chocolate custard. “I am willing to sacrifice a donut as a bribe to get you to stay and talk to me for a little while.”

Sam laughed and pulled up the chair, leaning over to take the proffered donut.

“You don’t have to bribe me you know – I’m on a break, and I wanted to come see you.”

“Oh well, in that case, give my donut back!”

“Not a chance,” replied Sam before taking the biggest bite he could manage from the chocolate custard.

Steve grinned, setting the remaining donut aside and taking a bite of his original glazed, sighing happily. The donut was like a little bit of heaven – fresh and squashy and utterly delicious.

“Oh my god…this is so much better than hospital food,” he mumbled around his mouthful.

Sam nodded in agreement.

“Glad you appreciate it,” he replied. “So, how’s Captain America getting along?”

He gestured in the direction of Steve’s drawing pad where several comic panels sat half-inked. The concept of the comic was pretty simple: a small, sickly kid from Brooklyn gets continuously rejected from the army during the Second World War, only to be picked for an experiment to make the world’s first superhero. It had been Steve’s way of making a political statement as well as earning money. Captain America was patriotic but a genuinely good person who always did what he believed was right even if it meant going against the orders of his superiors. Captain America was the kind of guy Steve wished he could be – fighting the world’s injustices and making a positive difference, inspiring others to be better people.

“Uh…he’s in dire straits,” he replied. “He’s just defeated Red Skull and now he’s trying to stop a plane carrying bombs from crashing into New York City.”

“Is he gonna make it?”

Steve shrugged.

“The controls are shot. The best he can do is crash land it into the Atlantic.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up.

“You’re killing him off?”

“Not exactly,” Steve replied, awkwardly.

It had been a tough decision, but Steve’s own life hung in the balance. If all went well and the team at SHIELD found him a heart and Steve lived through the transplant then Cap could go on fighting the good fight. On the other hand, if Steve didn’t make it then his comic…his character…would be left hanging. Nobody would ever get closure on the story he’d been working on for years.

“Let’s just say this character arc is ending,” he said. “Just in case I don’t make it, y’know.”

Sam looked at him levelly, setting aside his donut.

“Steve…”

“Don’t worry,” Steve interrupted, “I’m not giving up and I’m determined to fight to my last damn breath, but…we all know my chances are shaky. I just don’t wanna leave things unfinished.”

Sam sighed and sat back in his chair, picking his donut up again and taking a delicate, thoughtful nibble.

“I guess you have a point,” he replied. “But I will be pretty pissed off if you snuff it, man. That comic is the highlight of my month.”

Steve grinned.

“Good to see I’m a highly valued friend, Sam.”

“Damn straight,” Sam muttered.

 

****

 

Bucky’s apartment felt cold and empty; a side effect of not having been lived in for a week. He’d come home just like he’d promised Natasha; eaten a frozen microwave meal for dinner; and showered before climbing into bed. The only problem was, now he couldn’t sleep. Bucky’s mind was racing, thinking about all the things that could possibly go wrong with Steve’s LVAD during the night.

He knew Nat was right – that there were other doctors in the hospital, and more experienced doctors than him who could take care of Steve if they had to, but still, he couldn’t settle. The worst thing about it was that he knew it wasn’t just concern for a patient. He liked Steve; liked spending time with him; liked the fluttery feeling he got in his stomach when Steve laughed or smiled or even just looked at him with that half smirk and mischief in his blue eyes. He liked the dumb, chunky woollen beanie and the dumb glasses that took up half his face and magnified his long-lashed eyes, and he loved those slender, long-fingered hands that sketched patiently for hours on end.

Bucky Barnes kinda had it bad.

Sighing heavily, he threw the covers aside and swung his legs to the floor, padding through to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water.

He knew he should have gone back to bed and tried to sleep but Bucky still found himself throwing on jeans and a comfy sweater, getting in his car and driving back to SHIELD almost on autopilot. The nightshift nurses were in full swing but the ward was still busy and bustling. The light’s were still on in Steve’s room when Bucky reached it, and he smiled to himself as he leaned against the doorframe, watching Steve carefully ink his drawings with precision and patience; tongue sticking out between his lips.

He was absorbed in his work, not even noticing Bucky’s presence until he cleared his throat.

“Hey!” said Steve, looking up in surprise. “I thought you’d gone home for the night.”

Bucky shrugged.

“I did. There wasn’t much happening there – much more going on here.”

Steve grinned.

“I knew it. You’re stalking me.”

“Guilty as charged,” replied Bucky with a grin.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Steve said. “People have pressed charges for less.”

Bucky couldn’t help but laugh as he crossed the room and lowered himself into Steve’s bedside chair. His back screamed in protest.

“I, uh…I couldn’t settle,” he admitted. “Couldn’t get to sleep. My mind is too busy, so I thought I’d come pay you a visit.”

Steve grinned, setting aside his pen and sketchpad to focus all his attention onto Bucky.

“I know the feeling.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I can never really sleep in hospitals,” Steve replied. “Although now you’re here, you better have something fun for us to do, Barnes. Your visit has cut into my very valuable time. I’m very busy and important, so this better be worth it.

Bucky laughed again.

“Well…I guess there’s a Scrabble board at the nurses’ station,” he replied.

“Perfect,” Steve replied with a mischievous grin. “I hope you’re prepared to get your metaphorical ass kicked.”

Twenty minutes later and Bucky was finding out just how competitive Steve Rogers was at board games. They were breaking even on points, but Steve had an uncanny knack for stealing the triple word score squares and Bucky was starting to worry that he might not be the smartest person in the room.

“I'm not just another pretty face, you know,” said Steve as he scribbled down his score. “Got it going on up here as well.”

He tapped the side of his head and smirked.

“So you keep telling me.”

“Yep. I probably know hundreds of words.”

“Really?” Bucky replied, mildly; surveying his letter tiles. “Hundreds? Wow, you're a real brain trust.”

“Ouch.”

Bucky glanced up to find Steve still smirking at him, absolutely unfazed. He hid his own grin, ducking his head.

“Well, I'm highly competitive.”

Picking up his tiles, Bucky began to place them on the board.

 “Screw: S-C-R-E-W, that's 25 points, thank you very much.”

“Wait a second,” Steve said, leaning forward. “You didn't tell me we were playing naughty word Scrabble.”

Bucky laughed as he wrote down his own score.

“We're not. You just have a dirty mind.”

“Oh, it's filthy,” admitted a straight-faced Steve. “You're the one that put down ‘screw’.”

“I was referring to hardware, not sex.”

“Oh,” Steve murmured.

Bucky shook his head in amusement. He didn’t know why it was so easy – this back and forth kind of banter they had going; bouncing off each other. He didn’t even feel guilty about outwardly flirting with Steve now. He was off duty after all. Just a visitor.

“So,” said Steve as he looked over his letter tiles. “How come you’re single?”

Bucky laughed and sat back in his chair.

“I dunno,” he replied, honestly.

Steve’s blue eyes flickered upwards, glancing at Bucky over the rim of his glasses.

“You’re not celibate, are you?”

His laughter intensified as Steve’s smirk grew wider.

“Maybe,” joked Bucky.

“How am I supposed to get in your pants if you're celibate?”

“That's inappropriate to say to your doctor,” Bucky mused with a grin.

Steve glanced up at him again with evident mischief in his eyes.

“You know what's inappropriate?” he said. “Promising sexual favours to a patient to get him to live and then backing out.”

Bucky almost dropped his Scrabble tiles on the floor in shock. He stared at Steve, his mind racing over the past week, retracing everything he’d ever said to him in that time.

“Steven Grant Rogers! I so never ever promised…”

“In my head, you did. In my head, you delivered.”

Bucky visibly relaxed, his heart still doing overtime as he calmed down. Sometimes he honestly couldn’t tell if Steve was serious or not.

“Well…”

“Don't worry,” Steve added with a wistful sigh; leaning back against his pillows and looking up to the ceiling. “You weren't very good.”

Blue eyes flickered towards him again as Bucky’s jaw dropped.

“Okay,” he murmured. “You know what? I was being nice. I was letting you win because you're ‘Mr. Sick Needs A New Organ’ Guy, but just for that comment, I'm going to kick your ass.”

Steve grinned at him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! I'm going to…”

Bucky tailed off as he looked at the Scrabble board. While Bucky had been processing, Steve had played his word.

“You put down ‘mount’, Steve? Really?”

Steve Rogers’ laughter could be heard all the way down to the nurses’ station as Bucky Barnes shook his head and wondered what the hell he’d let himself in for.


	8. Chapter 8

The pain in Steve’s chest started around three in the morning at the end of his second week on the LVAD. His body was used to pain and breathing difficulties, and Steve hated to bother anybody over a bit of discomfort but when his oxygen saturation monitor stared to beep shrilly, sending nurses scurrying into his room, Steve realised he possibly should have said something sooner.

Sam Wilson was at his side within minutes, casting a worried look at the sats monitor and pulling the oxygen mask from the wall.

“You okay, man?” he asked, sliding the elastic around the back of Steve’s head and settling the plastic mask over Steve’s mouth and nose with one hand, adjusting the oxygen flow with the other.

“Honestly?” replied Steve. “I’m not feeling so great.”

Sam’s brow furrowed further and he turned to the nursing student who loitered behind his shoulder.

“Page whichever one of Dr Barnes’ interns is on call tonight,” he murmured before turning back to Steve. “How long have you been struggling to breathe?”

Steve bit his lip guiltily and glanced at the clock.

“A couple of hours, maybe?”

Exasperated, Sam rolled his eyes and whipped the stethoscope from around his neck, fitting it to his ears and pushing aside the layers of Steve’s clothing to listen to his chest. Steve watched his frown deepen even further as Sam listened to his laboured breathing.

“I’m not gonna lie, Steve,” he said eventually, putting the stethoscope back around his neck, “but this sounds bad. You should have called for help sooner.”

As much as he hated to admit it, Steve knew Sam was probably right. It was just that he’d been doing so much better on the LVAD – almost like a new lease of life – and he hadn’t wanted to admit that things were back into decline already.

The past week had been incredible for him. The gorgeous Bucky Barnes had been visiting him after his shift every night, usually bringing dinner with him and playing cards or dumb board games until late. They had this easiness together – this relationship that was most indecently innocent; chaste and yet outrageously flirtatious. The guy was perfect as far as Steve was concerned and in a way, he’d hoped it could be like that forever. He’d almost forgotten that he was dying from heart failure.

Reality was now crashing back into him with every passing minute as his breathing became more laboured and Dr Teddy Altman’s face became more worried.

“I’m going to call Dr Barnes,” said the intern, eventually.

Steve flinched. The last person he wanted to see him like this was Bucky.

“Have you gotta?” he asked; trying to keep his voice light. “It’s not that big a deal…”

“I think you have a pulmonary embolism, Steve,” Teddy interrupted him; his face serious. “It’s a pretty big deal.”

Steve’s heart hammered in his chest, a small knot of panic forming in his stomach. It was all going wrong way too fast. He thought he would have more time than this.

It was after pre-rounds by this point, so it didn’t take at all long for Bucky to arrive, pale and worried, flashing Steve a strained smile as he hurried into the room.

“How you doin’, Steve?” Bucky asked; his voice soft as his cool hand bushed Steve’s hair back to feel his forehead.

“Oh, I’m just great,” he wheezed, avoiding Teddy’s look of annoyance by keeping his eyes firmly on Bucky’s face.

“Yeah? I’m hearing otherwise.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear, Barnes.”

Bucky’s lips cracked into a real smile for a split second before his blue eyes darted to the monitors and his hands reached for his stethoscope. A minute of listening to Steve’s chest and any trace of Bucky’s smile was long gone.

“Sinus tachycardia,” he murmured to nobody in particular. “Low-grade fever; pulse ox 75. I'm hearing rales in your lungs.”

“Yeah, a freight train rolls through at noon,” joked Steve.

This time, Bucky didn’t crack a smile.

“How bad is the pain?”

“I don't know…five or six when I breathe.”

“Which means it’s a seven or eight when you're not trying to impress your doctor,” Dr Altman muttered from the other side of the room; just loud enough for Steve to hear.

Steve could feel the heat rise to his cheeks and was glad that the full oxygen mask obscured most of his face. If Bucky had heard Teddy, he gave absolutely no indication of it as he looped the stethoscope back around his neck and picked up the ultrasound probe. The jelly was cold on Steve’s chest and it made him shiver as he watched the fuzzy, black and white picture on the screen instead of looking at Bucky and the way his intense concentration and determinedly-set jaw made him look even more attractive than normal. With his life literally on the line, Steve was well aware of how inappropriate it was to drool over his doctor.

“What’s the diagnosis, doc?” Steve asked when Bucky eventually put down the ultrasound probe.

He had never seen Bucky look more serious as he sat down on the edge of the bed and took Steve’s hand in his; his smooth thumb brushing tenderly over Steve’s knuckles. Bucky took a deep breath and looked Steve in the eye.

“Dr Altman was right – it’s a clot.”

The knot of panic returned in an instant; twisting and turning in the pit of Steve’s stomach and making him want to vomit. He swallowed.

“So, what does that mean?” he asked. “Worst case scenario.”

“With a clot in your pulmonary artery, it'll cut off the oxygen to your lungs and you'll die of hypoxia. If the hypoxia doesn't kill you, the strain on your heart will.”

Steve’s heart almost stopped.

“Jesus, Barnes…don’t sugar coat it or anything.”

“You asked for the worst case, Steve,” Bucky replied seriously. “PEs can be fatal if we don’t treat them fast enough. It’s already been a couple of hours since you first started experiencing symptoms so we really need to get moving.”

Steve took a deep breath, squeezing his hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

“So how do we get it out of my artery?”

Bucky’s face remained stoic.

“This is a big clot - I can't get it with the catheter. I'm sorry; we have to open your chest again.”

“More surgery?”

“That’s not the worst of it,” Bucky admitted, quietly. “It's not a routine procedure. You're at serious risk for bleeding because of the anticoagulants already in your system.”

“Awesome,” Steve sighed. “So we’re back to this again – damned if I do and damned if I don’t?”

Bucky looked at the floor, his fingers tightening around Steve’s hand; strong and soothing, and making Steve feel like he could do anything as long as Bucky saw it through with him.

“Okay,” he murmured. “Let’s do it.”

 

****

 

Bucky had no idea how he was staying so calm as he watched Dr Banner slice open Steve Rogers’ chest for the second time in two weeks. Steve looked so frail on the operating table; a six-inch incision down the middle of his chest; skin peeled back like a banana and his ribs spread to reveal his heart. Bucky had never felt sick before while looking at internal organs but this was Steve and so it was different.

The past week had destroyed every effort Bucky had ever made to keep his relationship with Steve a professional one. Bucky’s reservations had been beaten down over Scrabble and Yahtzee and many games of Bullshit; by Steve’s laugh and those mischievous blue eyes and those beautiful, slender hands and delicate wrists. He was hooked by Steve’s terrible humour and dirty mouth and sharp mind. Bucky Barnes was so far gone on Steve Rogers there was no hope in coming back.

He’d almost forgotten that Steve was sick – deathly sick. Bucky’s own heart had skipped a beat the second the ultrasound had revealed how big the clot was. Normally, they would only consider surgery as the very last resort in the case of a pulmonary embolism, but by now he should have realised that Steve was never a normal case. The LVAD success had lulled them all into a false sense of security and now they were returning to earth with a very sharp jolt.

“Dr Barnes, could you just retract a little more, please?”

Bruce Banner’s voice startled him from his thoughts and Bucky had to take a deep breath; adjusting his grip on the retractor that was separating Steve’s organs. His fingers trembled a little and he begged them to be still.

“Are you ill, Dr Barnes?” asked Banner; his brown eyes flickering from Steve’s pulmonary artery to Bucky’s face for a split second.

“No, sir,” Bucky replied, taking a deep breath.

He could feel eyes on him from all over – the scrub nurses; his peers and superiors and interns all watching from the gallery. It was as though they could see him trembling; see how scared he was that Steve was under the knife again. For once, Bucky just wished that something would work; that Steve would stabilise and be okay until they found him a heart.

Banner glanced at him again and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

“Get yourself together, Barnes. This patient deserves us at the top of our game.”

“Yes, Dr Banner,” he mumbled in response.

It felt like years, watching Banner locate and extract the blood clot from Steve’s artery; stepping in every so often with suction or to cauterise stray bleeds as the attending surgeon continued to save Steve’s life.

“The back row of sutures are in place,” Banner murmured for the benefit of those in the gallery; finishing off a perfect loop-stitch. “Give me some clear field please, Dr Barnes.”

Bucky stepped in like he was in a dream, suctioning away the blood just as the machines went crazy; beeping with urgency.

“Pressure's dropping,” said the anaesthetist with frustrating calmness.

“Hang another unit,” replied Banner, matching her tone.

Bucky’s heart pounded hard in his chest as a scrub nurse hung a unit of blood and the machines carried on blaring.

“That clip should've done it,” Bucky said, fighting the panic rising in his chest.

Banner’s frown was deep as his hands worked fast to stitch up the artery.

“I don't know…there's something I'm missing.”

“He's losing pressure, Dr Banner,” the anaesthetist piped up again; her voice just as infuriatingly calm as before.

Bucky didn’t know how she could possibly be so serene when Steve’s heart was failing, but then again she didn’t know him; she’d never spent the time with him as Bucky had, talking about Brooklyn and their lives; she’d never played cards with him or board games; never joked with him and watched him draw in the sunlight coming from the hospital window.

“I'm working as fast as I can,” Banner muttered.

The machines started to beep furiously and fear gripped Bucky in its icy claws as he watched helplessly.

“We're losing him.”

Everything felt so far away from him. There was a bleed somewhere but they couldn’t see it. If they didn’t get it under control then Steve would die right here on this operating table and Bucky would never have told Steve how he felt…

“Barnes, get in here and help me find this bleeder!”

Bruce Banner’s voice cut into his panic and Bucky suddenly remembered what he was – he was a surgeon; he had the knowledge and the skills to help if only he could turn off that part of his brain that told him he would fall apart if anything happened to Steve.

“Shit, he’s flatlining!”

Bucky jumped as the metal instruments clanged loudly into the dish, finally alerting him to the terrifying sound of the continuous beep of a stopped heart. Bucky went cold, frozen as a scrub nurse pushed him aside and handed Banner the two internal defibrillation panels.

“Clear!”

Steve’s heart jumped as it was shocked with an electric current, but the beep remained continuous.

“Come on, Steve,” Bucky murmured as Banner charged the paddles again; his medical training finally kicking in as he turned and seized the syringe of epinephrine handed to him by a scrub nurse.

As Banner called ‘clear’ again, Bucky found himself praying. Just let him live, he thought; I’ll do anything just as long as you let him live.  


 

****

 

Waking up from surgery was the worst feeling in the world – the strange feeling of being somewhere between awake and asleep where lights were too bright and sounds were too far away; where the pain medication mixed with the remnants of anaesthesia to create an immediate hallucinogenic and almost euphoric state. It only lasted a short while after being brought around but Steve could never trust anything he’d seen or heard in this time. None of it felt real.

He’d seen Bucky’s face; head surrounded by a halo of fluorescent light and tear streaked skin that reminded him so much of the statue of the Madonna at the church his Ma used to take him to as a kid. He’d felt lips pressed to his forehead, so cool and soft on his feverish skin, and recalled whispered words, but none that made sense to his addled brain.

An hour or so later, Steve woke up again with the heavy feeling of morphine flooding his veins and a lightness in his chest where his lungs functioned properly once more. The hazy feeling was gone and now he just felt tired again. Steve lay with his eyes lightly closed, listening to the sounds of the nurses moving back and forward in the hall, and the sounds of pagers going off and telephones ringing and monitors beeping until he heard a sound that didn’t fit into the regular hospital pattern.

It was a sniff, soft and quiet, coming from the direction of the doorway. Peeling his eyes open, Steve turned his head to see the outline of Bucky – broad shoulders and easy stance giving him away as his face was in shadow; framed by the orange light of the corridor.

Steve managed a smile.

“So...I made it.”

Bucky sniffed again.

“Only just,” he replied; his voice husky and quiet.

“Then why are you crying?” Steve asked, slowly.

“I'm not crying.”

“You are too.”

Bucky fell quiet for a second, shifting his position in the doorway to lean a little more against the frame.

“You died, Steve,” Bucky replied in a whisper. “On the operating table…your heart stopped beating and we couldn’t get it going again. Not for a while…”

Steve’s damaged little heart battered against his ribcage in shock. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d died for a moment or two during surgery. In fact it was pretty standard for somebody whose heart had undergone so many repairs since infancy. What shocked him was Bucky’s reaction to it – the third year surgeon who was calm under pressure and thought fast on his feet was visibly shaken by Steve’s stubborn heart that didn’t like doing what the doctors wanted it to.

“You did, though,” he murmured. “You brought me back.”

Instead of soothing Bucky’s concerns, Steve’s words seemed to make things worse. He heard a sob catch in Bucky’s throat; saw the shadow of his shoulders as they heaved and trembled with the effort of keeping himself under control. Steve couldn’t understand why Bucky was so upset.

“Barnes?” he asked; his own voice catching slightly. “Why are you crying over me?”

“Because I lost you,” Bucky choked. “For a minute I lost you and I was scared to death.”

“Why?”

Steve’s stomach was beginning to coil and tense with anxiety again. There was no logical reason why his doctor should be so upset over this; why Bucky Barnes should be crying over Steve Rogers. There was only one thing his panicked brain could think of and it was impossible…it had to be impossible because there was no way in heaven and earth that Bucky Barnes could possibly…

“Damn it,” Bucky replied; his voice breaking. “I cannot fall for my patient.”

Oh.

Steve had been wrong about the worst feeling on earth – it wasn’t waking up from surgery in that awful state – it was this.

"You like me," he managed to say.

It felt like an eternity until Bucky replied.

"I like you," he said, huskily.

Steve’s mind couldn’t comprehend it. Bucky Barnes was perfect. He was beautiful and smart, kind and compassionate, calm and collected and ambitious and driven. He could have anybody in the whole world with just a flash of that gorgeous smile and the smallest drop of charm, but here he was, standing in front of Steve freaking Rogers, confessing his feelings.

It was like something out of a fairy tale, except the circumstances were turning it into Steve’s worst nightmare. Blind panic began to blossom in his chest and a wave of nausea hit him with full force, making him dizzy.

"No," Steve croaked. "You can't like me. You can't."

Bucky sniffed; his arm moving to his face to presumably wipe away tears.

"Why not?"

"Because you can't! It's not fair!"

“Not fair?” Bucky repeated with confusion. “What the hell are you talking about, Steve?”

Steve could feel the hot prickle of tears in the corners of his own eyes but his arms felt too heavy to lift and wipe them away. The shadow of Bucky in the doorway blurred and splintered; refracting into countless images as Steve fought to quell the panic and misery he felt.

"You!” he replied. “You're not fair! You weren't supposed to like me. There's nothing here to like!"

"There's everything to like..."

“No there's not!” Steve hissed, desperately. “This was never supposed to happen, Buck! I’m not the guy people like you are supposed to fall for. My whole life, nobody has ever looked at me twice. I’m just the skinny, sickly little Brooklyn kid with a big mouth and an attitude problem that nobody ever paid that much attention to. I’ve been on borrowed time for a while now and I thought ‘screw it’; dying gave me the guts to act in ways I’ve never done before…say things I’ve never been able to say. The day we met, I thought you’d brush me off. You were supposed to brush me off, but I flirted with you and you flirted back. I let you because for once in my life I didn't feel like the dud; the guy who everyone overlooks; and it's not fair because I like _you_. I like you so damn much it hurts, but you weren't supposed to like me! Not _me_!”

Steve’s voice cracked and he gasped for breath as tears streamed down his face. Never in a million years had he thought this would happen to him. He swallowed large lungfuls of air as Bucky stepped away from the doorframe and took a step closer to him.

“Why the hell not?” Bucky asked.

“Because I’m _dying_!” Steve sobbed. “I have a couple of weeks to get a new heart or I’m dead. You can’t like me, Bucky, because I’m very likely going to die and I don’t want to be the one to leave you heartbroken.”

This was all his fault, Steve thought.

“Steve…”

Bucky’s voice was soft and sad, and Steve couldn’t stand it.

“I can’t do this anymore, Buck,” he whispered; suddenly overwhelmed with misery. “Please leave.”

Bucky had been in the process of moving closer; of crossing the room to Steve, but the thought of that large, warm, comforting hand enveloping his was too much to bear. He couldn’t do this to Bucky; couldn’t put him through all this only to die at the end of it. He had to push Bucky away now before he hurt him beyond repair.

“LEAVE!”

Steve didn’t know if he’d yelled it or if it had come out as more of a croak; the tears in his eyes obscuring his vision. All he knew was the emptiness he felt as Bucky’s shadow disappeared from the doorway and the misery he felt deep in his soul as he realised that Bucky hadn’t fought him on it.


	9. Chapter 9

Bucky was in a daze as he walked towards the nurse’s station and away from Steve’s room. In all honesty, he hadn’t had a plan regarding telling Steve how he felt about him, but in his mind it went better than in reality. He was confused and upset, playing the conversation of moments earlier over in his head as he stumbled down the hallway. Steve liked him and admitted as much, but then in the next breath he’d rejected Bucky most harshly.

Maybe it was his own fault – for falling for Steve; for admitting his feelings in the aftermath of Steve’s surgery. It had just spilled out of him; those overwhelming emotions he felt knowing that Steve was alive despite watching him die on the operating table. He’d lost Steve for a moment and he had just known he couldn’t go another minute denying what he felt.

Despite what Steve had said to him, Bucky knew one thing to be absolutely certain and as he saw Dr Banner walking towards him, he knew what he had to do.

“Dr Barnes,” Bruce Banner said quietly as he approached. “We need to have a talk about your performance in the OR today.”

“Yes, we do,” Bucky agreed.

Banner was looking at Bucky curiously, dark brows knitted together as he took in Bucky’s red-rimmed eyes and dripping nose from crying.

“We can go somewhere quiet,” Banner murmured. “My office is free…”

“No, I’m fine,” Bucky lied; drawing the back of his hand over his face.

In truth, he was too afraid of breaking down if he was taken aside to talk privately and Bruce Banner wasn’t good with tears. Bucky knew he was better to just say it now; to get it over with so they could all move on.

“I need you to take me off Steve Rogers’ case,” Bucky said, steadily.

Banner blinked at him in surprise.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You need to give Steve Rogers’ case to somebody else,” he repeated. “Dr Romanoff would be an excellent choice – she’s familiar with the patient and his condition; she has experience with LVAD; she’s…”

“Hold on,” Banner interrupted; pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Why am I taking you off this case? You weren’t yourself in the OR, Barnes and I get that, but I’m not going to take you off the case because you had an off-day. You’re obviously unwell – I was going to offer you a couple of days off.”

Bucky almost laughed; shaking his head in defeat.

“I’m not ill, Dr Banner. I’m afraid it’s worse than that.”

“Define worse,” Bruce replied, slowly.

A few heads had looked up from their paperwork, trying to not make it obvious that they were listening into the conversation. At this point, Bucky was beyond caring who knew about it. It would be all over the hospital by the next morning anyway.

“I fell for my patient, Dr Banner,” Bucky said; holding his head high. “I developed feelings for him and I tried my hardest not to but after what happened in the OR today…I think it’s safe to say I’ve failed. I can’t remain objective towards his treatment and I can’t think clearly when he’s in distress. So I need you to take me off this case and give it to somebody else. It’s the best thing for everyone.”

Bruce Banner blinked at him as he processed the information with a look of disbelief. A hush had fallen around the nurses’ station as interns, residents, and nurses alike slowed down and stopped chatting to listen in; passing glances between them as they waited for Banner’s response.

Banner was not the kind of guy that handled stress very well. It was a well known fact that he spent a lot of time in stress management because he tended to blow up under certain circumstances. When it came to surgery, Dr Banner was always calm, collected and focussed even in the most dire times. It wasn’t surgery that caused him stress – it was people. People and their drama. Bucky could almost see Banner counting to ten in his head to stave off his blow up.

“Okay,” he replied, eventually; his face giving nothing away. “I’ll pass the case to Natasha Romanoff.”

“Thank you, sir,” Bucky managed.

He felt both relieved and miserable that Banner had taken the news so well and given Steve’s case away with very little argument. Bucky was officially no longer Steve’s doctor and he wasn’t sure how to deal with that.

“I think you need to go home,” Banner added; dropping the volume of his voice. “Get some sleep; come back refreshed in the morning. I’ll give you a new case then.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Banner grunted in response and moved away, ducking his head as he walked past Bucky and clear of the nurses’ station. Bucky let out a long breath and suddenly it was as though the volume had been turned up again on the surgical wing; everyone talking at once and about him. He needed a drink. Preferably several drinks - strong ones and in quick succession.

Ignoring the stares and the voices, Bucky walked with his head held high to the locker rooms. There was only one place to go after a day like this.

 

****

 

Steve hadn’t felt this wretched since his mother’s death a few years earlier. He just couldn’t believe it; couldn’t believe how stupid he was to have flirted with Bucky Barnes in the first place. Things like this just didn’t happen to him. There was no reason in this world why Bucky Barnes would develop feelings for somebody like him and it left Steve confused for himself and miserable that his actions had hurt the best guy in the world.

He didn’t know how much time had passed since Bucky had left; minutes blurred into hours on the cocktail of post-surgery pain meds and he never knew if he’d fallen asleep in between. All he knew is that his dejected little heart skipped a beat when he heard footsteps at the doorway and blinked furiously, trying to focus on the figure who entered.

“Bucky?” he croaked, hopefully.

“No,” replied the familiar voice. “It’s just me – Sam.”

“Oh…”

Steve tried hard not to sound disappointed as his favourite nurse approached the side of his bed and pushed away Steve’s layered blankets and surgical gown to check the dressing covering the wound running down his chest. Despite his harshness towards Bucky, Steve was still hoping he’d come back.  He liked Bucky a lot; possibly too much for the circumstances. If things were different; if Steve had received the donor heart he’d come in for six weeks ago, then things wouldn’t be nearly so complicated. Steve could probably have accepted that Bucky liked him back because there would be hope for them.

As it was, Steve’s hope was fading fast. He was never going to stop fighting for his life – not until he’d drawn his last breath, but as the days went by and his body continued to fail him, Steve was starting to accept the fact that he’d never leave this hospital.

“So,” Sam murmured as he pulled Steve’s blankets up around his shoulders. “What happened between you and Barnes that has the entire surgical floor in an uproar?”

Steve flinched slightly. News travelled way too fast in this place.

“What are people saying?” he asked.

Sam shrugged, lightly.

“Well…Barnes asked Banner to take him off your case and give it to Natasha Romanoff.”

Steve’s heart sank miserably. He’d blown it. He’d really screwed things up.

“Oh…” he managed.

Sam perched himself on the edge of Steve’s bed and sighed.

“The rumour is that Barnes felt he couldn’t continue as your doctor because he’s in love with you,” Sam continued. “But everyone knew that already.”

Steve’s head turned sharply and he peered at the blurred image of Sam’s face.

“What do you mean?”

Sam’s eyebrows arched upwards as he looked at Steve.

“Well…it was kinda obvious.”

The heart monitor began to pick up pace as Steve’s heart thumped in his chest.

“I…I don’t understand…”

Sam Wilson’s look was one of bewilderment as he looked down at Steve’s panicked face.

“Are you kidding me?” he said. “Do you think Barnes stays behind for hours after his shift to play games with all his patients? Do you think he brings them picnics? Flirts that shamelessly with everyone?”

In truth, Steve hadn’t even thought about it. At the time he hadn’t questioned Bucky’s motives, he’d just accepted them; convinced himself that the board games and the picnics and the long conversations that went on late into the night were just Bucky being friendly. It had been there right in front of him the whole time and he’d never fully realised the way Bucky felt about him until this day. Steve could have stopped it at any time and he didn’t because it had felt so good to be the centre of somebody’s attention for once.

“Is he okay?” Steve asked, weakly.

Sam shrugged again.

“I dunno,” he admitted. “I’m just telling you what I’ve heard going around the surgical floor.”

Steve closed his eyes and rested back against the pillows with a sigh. He couldn’t believe how dumb he was; how cruel he’d been…

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” Sam asked; his voice so quiet and gentle that Steve felt tears spring to his eyes again.

He drew a shaky breath and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, attempting to pull himself together.

“When I woke up from my surgery, Bucky was standing in the doorway. He was sniffling and I joked about him crying over me,” Steve murmured. “Turns out I died on the table and Bucky was cut up about it. He was standing there, pouring his heart out about how scared he was that he almost lost me and that he liked me, and all I could think about was how God has some sick, twisted sense of humour.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Sam.

Steve laughed, bitterly.

“Because he brought me the world’s most beautiful, perfect man and then put a time limit on my life,” he replied. “I have been falling for Bucky Barnes since the minute I met him and I can’t possibly be happy about any of this because I’m dying.”

Sam shifted on the bed.

“So, you pushed him away.”

Steve nodded.

“Yes.”

“Well, that was dumb,” Sam replied.

Steve’s eyes flew open and looked at his favourite nurse.

“How can you say that?”

“Because you’ve been happy,” Sam said in frustration. “For the entire time you’ve known each other, you’ve both been happy. Despite the situation, despite the circumstances, you both fell for each other and that’s worth hanging onto…especially now.”

Tears prickled at the corners of Steve’s eyes and he blinked them away.

“I’m probably going to die, Sam,” he replied, miserably. “I can’t do that to him – I can’t accept what he feels for me if I’m just going to die and leave him alone and in pain…”

“That’s not really up to you,” Sam interrupted. “You can’t help who you fall for, Steve and as much as you wish Bucky didn’t fall for you, he did. Pushing him away isn’t going to stop that.”

A hot tear spilled over and rolled down Steve’s cheek. He didn’t even have the energy to wipe it away. He hated that Sam made sense; hated that pushing Bucky away hurt more than the thought of dying. Steve wished he’d said something different; that he’d asked Bucky to stay and not leave, but it was too late now. Bucky was no longer Steve’s doctor and Steve couldn’t shake the horrible thought that instead of making it right, he might never see Bucky again.

 

****

 

There was only one place for the staff of SHIELD to go at the end of a long and stressful shift; a place to congregate with colleagues; to let their hair down and relax away from the blood and broken bones and trauma of the hospital. That was how Bucky found himself at Howling Commandos  – the bar across the street from SHIELD owned by a bunch of ex-armed forces guys  – surrounded by people he didn’t know and feeling lower than he’d been in a long time.

“What can I get ya?”

Bucky looked up into the face of a huge, broad-shouldered redhead with a spectacular moustache and pale blue eyes that studied Bucky carefully despite his disarming smile.

“Whatever will get me shitfaced the quickest.”

The bartender’s red eyebrows shot up and a second later, he had a bottle of tequila in his hand.

“I know that look,” said the cheerful bartender as he set a shot glass on a black, square napkin at the bar in front of Bucky. “You’re either getting hell from your boss or your spouse. Which is it?”

Bucky gave him a rueful grin.

“Weirdly, it’s neither.”

He watched as the bartender poured him a generous shot before picking it up and knocking it back; the heat of the alcohol immediately filling his empty stomach and wrapping around his head, making his eyes water. Shuddering, he looked back at the bartender who said nothing, but his cocked eyebrow encouraged Bucky to continue.

“I have a patient…had a patient. The cutest guy you’ve ever met – big blue eyes, dirty mind, sarcastic as hell, so flirtatious. Which wasn’t really a problem; except I fell for him and he’s got a bad heart that threatens to stop at any minute, and I told him I’m in love with him and he pushed me away.”

The bartender let out a long sigh and slowly filled up Bucky’s shot glass.

“Sounds like you need this,” he murmured. “This shot’s on the house. I’ll leave the bottle.”

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbled as he knocked back the second shot, miserably.

Natasha found him there an hour later with the best part of the bottle of tequila in his belly; glassy eyed with his head resting on the bar.

 “James?”

Bucky blinked at her for a few seconds before he recognised the copper hair and green eyes and cracked a watery smile.

“Heeeeeeey, Tasha!” he slurred. “To what do I owe the…pleasure?”

Natasha Romanoff frowned and picked up the almost-empty bottle of tequila before turning to the bartender.

“How much of this has he had, Dugan?”

Dum Dum Dugan gave her a small shrug.

“Most of it, if I’m honest,” he replied. “It’s kinda impressive, really.”

“I’m sure,” droned Natasha as she turned back to Bucky. “What’s going on, Barnes?”

“My life is falling apart…” mumbled Bucky, miserably.

He knew he was being melodramatic and he could sense Natasha’s eyes rolling impatiently as she slid onto the barstool next to him and poured herself a tequila shot.

“I got a call from Banner a little while ago,” she said, ignoring Bucky’s previous comment. “He said you were off Steve Rogers’ case. What happened?”

“I’m an idiot, that’s what happened,” Bucky replied.

Dum Dum’s tequila had indeed got him very drunk in the shortest space of time but instead of numbing his melancholy, it had just made him feel worse. He supposed he should have known it would happen, what with alcohol being a depressant and all, but still. He felt almost betrayed by that bottle of golden liquid.

“I’m aware of that,” Natasha murmured. “I’m asking what happened to make Banner take you off the case.”

Bucky snorted.

“He didn’t take me off the case,” he clarified. “I asked him to give it to you instead of me.”

Natasha’s eyebrows shot up and she quickly downed another tequila.

“What the hell for?”

Bucky sighed, heavily.

“I fell for him, Natasha,” he confessed to his friend. “I know you told me not to; told me that I had to keep some distance and I really tried to, but it just happened, y’know? And then in surgery today, he died for like…a minute and I was so scared that I was gonna lose him that I broke down and told him that I’m in love with him, and…well he told me I wasn’t being fair and then he’d be dead in a couple of weeks, so not to bother with him.”

He gasped for breath when he’d finished; his words having fallen out in a drunken torrent with barely a pause. Bucky didn’t notice the look that passed between Natasha and Dum Dum as he put his head down on the bar again and sighed, heavily.

“Alright,” said Natasha, sternly. “That’s enough.”

“Wha…?

She tugged him upright with surprising strength and shook him gently by the shoulders.

“That’s enough wallowing,” Natasha continued. “Now I’m going to take you back to the hospital and we’re gonna get you hooked up to a banana bag…”

“Now that sounds vaguely dirty…”

“And,” Natasha said, ignoring him, “you’re going to sober up and go back to Steve and tell him to stop being a dumbass.”

Bucky blinked at her again, confused.

“I’m what?”

Natasha huffed.

“Steve Rogers is at his dumbest when he’s being stubborn,” she clarified. “Right now he’s scared. He’s scared of dying, he’s scared of starting something that may have a time limit, and he’s damn scared of taking a chance that might lead to somebody else being in pain. If you’re serious about this; if you’re serious about him, then you need to go back and tell him that you’re not going anywhere. He’s gonna keep fighting this, James and damn it, you let him know that you’ll be right there, by his side and fighting with him too. You’re not giving up on him, and you both need to know that.”

Natasha’s green eyes were fierce and, for a second, Bucky was a little afraid of her. Slowly, he began to nod.

“You’re right,” he mumbled.

“I usually am,” replied Natasha, mildly. “Now come on – let’s go insert your banana bag.”

 

****

 

Steve had slept a little, although fitfully; his head full of how badly he’d handled things with Bucky and how much he wished he could take it back.  He felt exhausted and dejected; just a shell held together with tubes and stitches and morphine.

At first he thought he was imagining the familiar footsteps at the doorway until the orange light from the corridor was blocked out, casting a shadow over his bed. Without his glasses, Steve had to squint against the halo of light to make out the outline of those shoulders he loved so much. Even then, his heart barely dared to beat faster with hope.

“Bucky?” he ventured, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah,” Bucky replied.

He sounded hazy, his voice a little blurred around the edges.

“You came back,” murmured Steve.

Bucky shifted in the doorway.

“Yeah, I came back,” he said. “Because you’re right – this isn’t fair. None of this is fair, but I’m not just gonna walk away from it because it scares you. I’m a big boy, Steve. I can make my own choices and my choice is to stay with you till the end of this…whatever the outcome is. I care about you. You’re stuck with me.”

Steve felt the tears well up in the corners of his eyes again and hastily blinked them away.

“You know you’re just setting yourself up for a broken heart with me, right?”

Bucky was still and silent for a heartbeat before he came forward, his face emerging from shadow as he entered the room. His eyes were red-rimmed and blurry; his hair a mess where he’d been pulling and tugging at it, and his button-down shirt was rumpled. He didn’t look like the perfect and professional surgeon who had appeared to Steve so many times over the last few weeks, but more like a guy who had spent the night fretting about someone he cared deeply about.

He was at Steve’s side in three strides; stooping low as he pushed Steve’s hair back from his face and looked into his eyes.

“You’re worth a broken heart,” Bucky whispered.

His breath ghosted against Steve’s lips for a second before he closed the gap and kissed him. It was soft and chaste; just a gentle brush of Bucky’s lips against his own but it was everything Steve had ever wished for.

Negotiating his way around LVAD wires, catheters, and IV tubes, Bucky kicked his shoes off and climbed onto the bed next to him; sliding his arm gently around Steve’s shoulder and drawing him close to his chest.

Steve couldn’t remember the last time he was held like this. He couldn’t remember if he’d been held like this ever in his life; with strong arms encircling him and gentle fingers running through his hair; soft kisses pressed against the top of his head. Bucky was warm and solid and his heat seeped through all of Steve’s layers, warming his skin and soothing his worries.

He could smell the sweetness of tequila on Bucky’s skin, combining with the freshness of his body wash and the underlying metallic scent of fresh perspiration. Steve snuggled in further; pushing his cold hands underneath the hem of Bucky’s shirt to feel the smooth skin underneath and the small thatch of hair that trailed down his chest.

“Is it inappropriate to feel you up right now?” Steve joked.

Bucky laughed gently and hugged Steve a little tighter.

“Not so much,” he murmured.

Steve smiled to himself as he looked up into Bucky’s eyes; his own eyes fluttering closed as Bucky smoothed his hair back from his face and cupped Steve’s cheek with his hand. Their second kiss was the most perfect thing he’d ever experienced; soft and languid; nothing rushed or hurried as Bucky’s tongue met his and their lips softly brushed together. Steve’s fingers curled into the softness of hair on Bucky’s chest, and Bucky’s own hands couldn’t stop petting and caressing every part of Steve he could reach without upsetting the wires.

Right here, in this moment, nothing could touch them; nothing could come between them and their moment and Steve wished that morning would never come; that time would stop and they could stay entwined together like this forever.


	10. Chapter 10

By the next morning, the whole hospital knew about Steve and Bucky, and neither of them gave two hoots about it. There were whispers in the hallways and pointed glances that Bucky ignored as he passed and Steve just smiled at the nurses who asked him about what happened that night with the lovely Dr Barnes.

Steve missed seeing him during the day. He missed Teddy and Billy and America coming in to check on him and chatting about everything and nothing. The interns had pretty much become part of his extended family by this point and Natasha’s interns were a little harder to like, except for Cassie Lang. She was a sweet girl; smart and funny and very hardworking, and easily Natasha Romanoff’s favourite intern out of the three.

As much as he had always liked Natasha, Steve couldn’t wait until the end of the day when the nurses started their handover and the doctors’ shifts ended. America would usually stop by first just to say hi and bring some juice or soda for him, usually leaving when Billy and Teddy turned up with donuts or brownies, but not without stealing one first.

Finally, he would get Bucky all to himself again and it was the highlight of Steve’s long day. They would still play a game of Scrabble, trying to outdo each other on the amount of dirty words they could put down on the board before Bucky would kick off his shoes and climb into the hospital bed with Steve. Whatever they watched on TV went largely ignored in favour of kisses and cuddles; Steve curling his body into Bucky’s as much as he possibly could and listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart. It comforted him to have Bucky’s heart beat under his ear, lulling him to sleep as strong fingers feathered through his hair.

By morning, he was always gone and Steve started the countdown all over again.

The only decent thing to come out of a new team in charge of his care was that Steve spent less time chatting and more time finishing his comic. He’d already had a long talk with his editor Peggy about the fact that this one might be his last. Peggy Carter was an amazing boss and a good friend who understood the seriousness of Steve’s condition. Together they had come up with an ambiguous ending to the comic where Captain America, trying to save New York City from being annihilated by Red Skull’s weapons, crash-landed the aircraft into the sea. They had decided that, should Steve not make it to the next instalment, it gave the Captain a heroic death that fitted his character but also it was easy enough to come back from if Steve survived.

He was in the middle of sketching out one of the final panels when a knock on the doorframe disturbed him and a battered, grinning face appeared.

“Clint Barton?” Steve exclaimed. “What the hell happened to you?”

The EMT chuckled and sauntered into the room with a mischievous grin. Clint and his partner Kate were the EMT team most called out to Steve whenever he’d needed urgent medical attention. It happened so often over the last few years that they all knew each other very well. He hadn’t seen Clint since his admission into SHIELD over a month ago, so it was a surprise to suddenly see him turn up in his room.

“Ah, I got smacked by a patient,” he said cheerfully, pointing to the band-aid that covered a cut on his brow. “I just spent ages in the ER getting stitched up because apparently it’s unprofessional to drive an ambulance with blood all over your face.”

Steve laughed at him.

“So what are you doing here?”

“I have a gift for you,” Clint said as he sidled up to Steve’s bed; both hands behind his back.

Steve eyed him, cautiously.

“Oh yeah? Why am I concerned about this?”

Clint laughed at him.

“I hear that you managed to hook up with a certain tall, dark, and handsome young cardiac surgeon.”

“Does literally everyone in SHIELD know about that?” Steve sighed.

“Oh yeah,” replied Clint. “We love a bit of gossip in a hospital. We eat that shit up!”

“What about it?”

 “During his med school training, the lovely Dr Barnes paid his way with a tidy little modelling career,” Clint said.

Steve blinked.

“I know. He told me.”

“Ah,” Clint replied with a sly grin, “but did you see any of the photo shoots?”

Clint Barton’s blond eyebrows waggled, causing the band-aid over the left one to unstick at the corner. He beamed at Steve and brought his hands out from behind his back, revealing a neat stack of magazines with colour-coded tabs sticking out between the pages.

“No way,” Steve murmured, suddenly realising what Clint had.

“Yes way! An almost complete compilation of Bucky Barnes’ modelling shoots. Kate spent a good few lunch breaks bookmarking the pages for you and she says there’s a lovely wet swimwear shoot in the July issue of GQ…”

“Oh my God…”

Clint held the magazines out like an offering.

“You are very welcome.”

Steve laughed as he took them; resisting the urge to flip through the pages immediately. He deeply appreciated the gesture from Clint and Kate and knew there was nothing that would make him happier at that moment that to drool over pictures of Bucky in wet Speedos, but he was also unsure of how Bucky would feel.

Yes, he had volunteered the information about modelling to put himself through medical school and he’d been far from embarrassed about the fact, but there was still something that made Steve a little uncomfortable about perusing them without Bucky’s permission. It wasn’t as though he was accidentally stumbling across one in a magazine. These had been actively sought out.

“I’ll treasure them forever,” he told Clint with a grin.

“You’d better!” Clint laughed. “It took me and Kate a good couple of weeks to hunt those down!”

Steve smiled at him and hugged the magazines to his chest.

“It must have been so hard for you both.”

“Oh, it was,” joked Clint, “but listen, man – I gotta get back to my shift. Kate is going crazy out there without me.”

“Sure,” Steve replied. “Say hi to Kate for me.”

“Will do!” Clint called over his shoulder as he hurried out of the door; leaving Steve alone with his stack of magazines.

Sighing lightly, Steve grimaced at a twinge in his chest as he set the magazines on the table and absently leafed through the pages of the top one. He didn’t know if his lungs were ever going to feel right again after all the complications he’d had due to his heart. Every so often he’d get a pain or a constricted feeling but it lasted only seconds so Steve didn’t feel too concerned. After two major surgeries within two weeks, he was bound to feel some residual twinges.

Ignoring the momentary ache, Steve stared at the stack of magazines and bit his lip, remembering his dilemma. On the one hand, he was faced with potential photographs of his somewhat-boyfriend wearing next to nothing. On the other hand, he felt a little like a prize pervert for wanting to look. Perhaps, he thought as his fingers toyed with the smooth glossy front cover of a Men’s Health, just a peek through one couldn’t do much harm.

 

****

 

Bucky felt as though he was working just to get to the end of the day to see Steve. Ever since he’d passed the case onto Natasha Romanoff, his interns had been total brats. Bucky didn’t think they’d ever forgive him for giving it up, but somehow he felt they were more upset on a personal level than a professional one. Either way, when his shift finished Bucky couldn’t wait to wash his hands of them, hang up his scrubs and stethoscope for the day, and spend the evening with his Steve.

He couldn’t believe how fast things had developed between them in a week. Once they had let go and accepted how they felt about each other, it was almost like they’d never been strangers; curling up in bed together with TV and movies; talking about all the little things; kissing. Bucky loved kissing Steve more than anything; loved the way Steve’s deft hands always found their way under Bucky’s shirt; the feel of Steve’s hair as Bucky ran his fingers through it and the softness of Steve’s lips against his. Those moments, it felt as though they were in their own little bubble where nothing could come between them and they could ignore their circumstances.

Running a hand through his hair as he approached Steve’s room, Bucky took a deep breath and knocked. Steve’s smile when he looked up was like sunshine.

“Hey!”

“Hey there,” Bucky replied, smiling at Steve who was bundled up in his layers again; blue eyes looking huge behind his thick-rimmed glasses. “How’s it going?”

Steve beamed at him as Bucky crossed the room and leaned down to kiss him softly.

“Things are good,” murmured Steve. “Actually, I got a gift today.”

“Oh?”

“Yup. From Clint Barton.”

Bucky frowned slightly as he pulled up a chair to sit by Steve’s bed.

“What did he bring you?” he asked. “Cold pizza and a pot of coffee?”

“Oh no,” Steve replied with glee. “Something much better than that.”

Bucky’s eyes followed Steve’s hands as he reached for a small stack of magazines on the table and his brain clicked into place.

“Oh my God…”

“Yesssss!” enthused Steve. “Bucky Barnes: Swimsuit Edition!”

“I’m gonna kill Barton,” Bucky replied as he started to laugh.

“Of course,” added Steve, “I didn’t wanna look through them before talking to you first. I didn’t want to do anything that made you uncomfortable.”

Steve looked so serious as he said it that it just made Bucky laugh harder.

“Oh wow. Steve, if the thought of people looking at me with next to nothing on made me uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have made a very good model now, would I?”

“Good point,” replied Steve, grinning wickedly as he grabbed the top magazine and flipped through to the coloured tab sticking out between the glossy pages.

Bucky grinned and sat back in the chair as Steve flipped through the shoot and gave a wistful sigh.

“My god, you have thick thighs and a body to die for. If I were you, I wouldn’t do anything but walk around naked all day. I wouldn’t have a job…I wouldn’t do anything at all except be….naked.”

Bucky snorted and folded his arms across his chest.

“It’s photoshop,” he countered. “It’s makeup and retouching; it’s not real.”

“Oh, I beg to differ,” replied Steve as he looked up from the magazine. “I now have firsthand experience of those abs and I can indeed confirm that they are real.”

Bucky laughed and playfully snatched the magazine from Steve’s hands. The magazine made him out to look like some bronzed Greek statue; all golden and glistening in the water. He remembered the day very well – having been spray tanned to within an inch of his life, Bucky had then been made to spend the whole day wading around in a freezing cold pool with his junk bulked out and his nipples taped down; blinded by artificial light and being yelled at by the photographer for the goosebumps on his skin that would not go down no matter how much Bucky tried to imagine he was in Bali.

“Yeah…” he muttered, “it’s really not as glamorous a life as you think.”

Steve sighed gently and leaned back against the pillows.

“I could be a model,” he said, softly.

Bucky’s eyebrows arched up.

“You could?”

“Sure,” replied Steve with a mischievous grin. “Give it a week or so and I’ll be modelling for the new med students in Gross Anatomy class!”

Bucky’s jaw dropped as Steve continued to grin at him.

“Steve,” Bucky said; horrified. “That’s not funny.”

As Bucky continued to be shocked, Steve cracked up into a fit of loud, body-shaking laughter.

“Oh my god,” he gasped. “You should see your face!”

“Your humour is dark as hell, pal!” Bucky countered. “It’s really not funny.”

“No, it’s hilarious,” Steve cackled.

He supposed that he couldn’t blame Steve for his gallows humour. At least he was looking on the bright side of a bad situation, but all the same, the thought of Steve actually dying scared Bucky more than anything. He didn’t want to think about it at all, not even as a joke.

Steve only stopped laughing when he started to cough, his ravaged lungs unable to sustain his mirth and Bucky had to turn up Steve’s oxygen flow as he climbed onto the bed and rubbed Steve’s back in soothing circles as he wheezed.

“You okay?” Bucky murmured into Steve’s hair as his breathing began to even out again.

“Yeah,” Steve croaked. “I guess I just have to take it easy on the comedy, huh?”

“I guess so.”

Sighing, Bucky pressed a kiss to Steve’s forehead and hoped to whatever powers in the universe that may have existed that they find a new heart for Steve soon.

 

****

 

Dr Cassie Lang was very thorough. Not that it was a bad thing that she was obsessed with extensive daily observations, but Steve hated being prodded and poked and moved from left to right. It was bad enough when he needed his sheets changed or pressure pads moved to stop him developing bed sores. Being a bed-bound patient was already crappy enough without all that.

He bore it with as much patience as he could muster as Cassie listened to his chest and frowned.

“I don’t like that look,” he muttered.

“It’s just my face,” she countered; frown deepening as she moved her stethoscope to the other side of his chest.

“That look is even worse.”

Cassie ignored him for a few seconds and straightened; sighing heavily as she jotted down her observations.

“Your breath sounds are a bit spotty,” she said eventually.

Steve grimaced.

“The last time somebody said that to me, I had a pulmonary oedema.”

Dr Lang made a soft, non-committal noise in the back of her throat and set her chart aside in order to draw back Steve’s blankets. The cold on his feet didn’t nearly bother him as much as Cassie’s silence.

“Cassie,” he ventured. “Do I have another pulmonary oedema?”

He watched her keep her face deliberately blank as she cautiously felt around his ankles.

“You do not have a pulmonary oedema,” she replied.

“Then why do you look so worried?” Steve asked; a knot forming in his stomach.

It took Cassie a few more agonizing minutes to respond to him; her long blonde ponytail swishing gently back and forth as she straightened and fixed Steve’s blankets.

“Have you been getting any shortness of breath lately?”

“You mean more than usual?” Steve countered, dryly.

“Yes. Any pains or twinges? Coughing?”

Steve bit his lip.

“I guess,” he murmured. “I’ve been getting chest pains for a couple of days. Lightning fast – they only last a couple of seconds.”

Cassie Lang’s mouth set into a thin, serious line as she listened to him and glanced at his observation chart.

“Your heart rate has been registering as irregular over the last few days too,” she murmured. “I’m going to get Dr Romanoff down here to consult.”

Steve huffed as she moved towards the door.

“Do you have to?”

Cassie ignored him as she left the room to presumably page Natasha Romanoff. Steve sighed and lay back against his pillows; closing his eyes against the harsh fluorescent lights. Bucky’s interns would have told him straight. America Chavez would have immediately told him what she thought was happening without ceremony while Billy Kaplan soothed his fears and Teddy Altman would have told him about all the treatments they could try. Cassie Lang on the other hand, kept her cards close to her chest and refused to give anything away. Steve hated it; hated not knowing; hated being left to stew in his own thoughts until Natasha arrived.

“What’s happening?” she asked as she bounded through the door in a whirlwind of copper waves and pristine white coat; snatching up Steve’s chart and quickly looking through it.

Behind her, Cassie Lang was suddenly a lot more chatty about what she’d found.

“According to his chart, over the last couple of days it seems that Steve has been suffering from an irregular pulse and mild palpitations. The patient also admits that he’s had shortness of breath, chest pains, and a cough.”

Natasha’s green eyes darted from the chart to Steve.

“Is this right?”

Steve nodded, slowly and Natasha turned to Cassie.

“Breath sounds?”

“Spotty,” replied Cassie. “I’ve also noticed some swelling around his legs, ankles, and abdomen; and also the veins in his neck.”

Automatically, Steve’s hand flew to the side of his neck in an attempt to feel for a protruding vein as he watched Natasha’s brows knit together in concern.

“Look,” he said; the panic growing with every passing second. “Can you please tell me what the hell is happening?”

Cassie and Natasha glanced at each other briefly.

“We don’t know yet,” Natasha said eventually.

“But you have an idea?”

“Yes,” Natasha replied. “But until I know more, I’m not about to concern you with it.”

Steve scowled at her.

“Bucky would tell me.”

Natasha went still, her green eyes growing cold as she looked at him calmly.

“Well he’s not on your case anymore, Steve. I am, and I do things a little differently.”

He wasn’t used to Natasha in full doctor mode. It had happened only once or twice since he’d known her and he hated it when she got like this. In a way, Steve understood her not wanting to worry him until she knew more but at the same time, Steve Rogers was at his worst when he was kept in the dark. He needed to know; he needed to prepare for the worst but Natasha was just as stubborn as he was. He’d never get the information out of her until she was ready to give it up.

“I need an EKG,” she said quietly to Cassie, “and an x-ray of his lungs. After that I want bloods and a urinalysis, and observations every twenty minutes. I don’t care how busy it is on the floor – if the nurses are swamped, I want you to do it.”

Steve listened, processing the medical terms in his mind. He’d had all these processes done before and many times, but the urgency in Natasha’s voice led him to believe she was more concerned about his condition than she was letting on.

He felt tired – sick and lightheaded and tight-chested as always. He’d pretty much accepted this as his constant state of being from here on out but even now the little voice in his head was telling him that he couldn’t go on like this forever. He had the feeling it was about to get much, much worse.

 

****

 

Bucky’s day was going rather smoothly so far. There had been no major incidents with his patients and his interns were keeping out of trouble for once. He’d even had time to go to the cafeteria to grab a coffee and a granola bar, and was cheerfully enjoying both as he turned the corner on the surgical floor and approached the nurses’ station to find Natasha Romanoff sitting behind the desk; a phone jammed between her ear and her shoulder, and a notepad in her hands.

“Hey!” he greeted her, quietly; perching on the side of the desk next to her.

“Hi,” Natasha replied, shortly.

It wasn’t anything unusual. She was obviously busy and Bucky was interrupting. He didn’t even think it unusual that she wouldn’t meet his eye.

“Who are you on the phone to?” he asked around a mouthful of granola bar.

Natasha waved an impatient hand at him and turned away; furiously scribbling something down on the notepad.

“Alright,” she said into the phone. “Okay…thanks.”

Bucky watched her as she slammed the phone back into the cradle and ripped the page from the notebook.

“Who were you on the phone to?” he repeated, a little louder than before.

Natasha still didn’t look at him as she stuffed the paper into her pocket.

“UNOS,” she murmured.

“UNOS? The transplant committee?”

Natasha nodded and Bucky’s heart suddenly began to pound.

“For Steve? What’s going on? Have they found him a heart? Is he getting a transplant?”

He almost leapt from the desk, coffee sloshing from the paper cup in his hand and onto his scrubs. Natasha looked sombre as she shook his head and finally looked at him.

“No,” she said quietly. “I was calling to make sure he’s the first person on the list to receive a heart if a viable organ turns up in the next few days.”

In a single second Bucky felt his whole world shift, like somebody had just pulled the floor out from under him and he had to grab the desk to steady himself as the room swam before his eyes.

“What’s happening Natasha?” he asked; nausea rising up in his throat.

Dr Natasha Romanoff took a deep breath, hands balling into fists at her sides.

“The right side of Steve’s heart is failing,” she said. “I think you need to be there when we tell him.”

 

****

 

It was remarkable how numb he felt, lying propped up on his multitude of pillows with Bucky holding his hand so tight Steve thought his bones might break.

“The right side of your heart is failing, Steve,” Natasha said; her voice sounding distant to Steve’s ears.

“Failing?” Steve repeated. “I thought the LVAD was there to stop it from failing.”

His throat felt tight; his mouth, dry. He watched as Natasha tensed, holding herself perfectly still with her arms wrapped around Steve’s chart; holding it like a security blanket.

“The LVAD was put in place to assist the left side of your heart – specifically the left ventricle,” replied Natasha. “The left side is still working, but all the problems the left side heart failure has caused your lungs, it seems the right side can’t cope. Right now, blood is backing up in your ventricles. It’s going to spread from the left ventricle to the right, and eventually that’s going to back up into your right atrium. When your right atrium fails, it’s going to cause the blood to back up elsewhere in your body and begin to cause multiple organ failure.”

Steve couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Beside him, Bucky held his hand and stroked his hair but Steve barely felt him.

“How do we fix it?”

“You need a new heart,” Natasha replied, immediately.

“I know that,” Steve said. “I’ve needed a new heart for a while now. I mean what can we do to buy more time until I get it.”

Behind Natasha, her three interns exchanged nervous glances; shuffling on their feet. To her credit, Natasha didn’t shy away from the bad news as she drew herself up tall and looked Steve directly in the eye.

“There isn’t anything we can do,” she murmured. “We’re out of time, Steve. If a donor heart doesn’t appear in the next few days, then that’s it. You die.”

Steve heard Bucky sob in his ear; felt hot tears on his skin as Bucky buried his face into Steve’s hair. He wished there was something he could say…anything at all to comfort Bucky at that moment. This is what he’d been so afraid of – of reaching the end of the line and leaving Bucky to the aftermath of going on without him. They’d had such a short time together and now…

“I’m not going down without a fight,” he said, quietly.

Despite the situation, Natasha cracked a wry smile.

“I never thought for a second you would,” she replied.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Steve’s body was always okay until it wasn’t. It seemed like every fibre of his being was stubborn; determined to carry on at full capacity until it just couldn’t any more. When it failed, Steve’s health went downhill very fast. It took three days for Steve to finally show signs of multiple organ failure; going from his usual fast-witted, potty mouthed self to a limp, cyanotic wreck, barely able to lift his head to take a sip of water. He hated himself for it; for finally getting to that state of weak and pathetic that he told himself he’d never reach. Steve had always been stubborn and tough, always pushing himself further than his body could really handle, but this time he simply couldn’t do it anymore.

The last few days however, had been sweet. Bucky had taken some emergency leave as he wasn’t really in any fit emotional state to practice medicine, and he’d spent the whole time at Steve’s bedside. It baffled him that Bucky was still there; knowing full well that Steve only had days left to live and still staying by his side. There weren’t that many people who would stick by a fella they barely knew when he was on his death bed. Bucky Barnes truly was something special and it broke Steve’s heart every time he thought about leaving Bucky in this world without him.

Bucky read to him constantly. On his last visit home, he’d retrieved the full collection of Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and proceeded to brighten Steve’s entire life with the various voices he put on for every single character. Steve laughed until he physically couldn’t, and then closed his eyes and listened after that. He really loved the series – always had ever since he was a kid and it delighted him to know Bucky loved it too. If only Steve would have lived; they could have found out what else they had in common…

He knew it did him absolutely no good to think like that. He wasn’t dead until his heart stopped and his brain ceased to function, and until that very second he was never going to give up hope that a heart would turn up for him. Death wasn’t going to take Steve Rogers so easily.

“ _In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with,”_ Bucky read; his voice soft and gentle as he leaned back in the high-backed chair next to Steve’s bed _, “and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”_

Steve smiled to himself; cracking his eyes open just a touch to look at Bucky. He looked like he hadn’t slept properly in days; dark, purplish circles around his grey-blue eyes and stubble taking over his chin and cheeks. Bucky was wearing the same soft navy sweater he’d been wearing for the past 3 days; the one Steve loved to bury his nose into and breathe in the mixture of Bucky, fabric softener, and residual cologne from a long time ago. The wool was worn and patchy in places but the colour really brought out his eyes and the darkness of his hair; giving Bucky the most attractive slouchy, casual look.

It was amazing how much he felt for this man; how strong a connection he felt and how deeply he cared for knowing Bucky all of five weeks. It may have been fate that brought them together in the first place, because fate was fickle and it liked to play cruel games; bringing people together only to tear them apart all too soon. And yet Bucky seemed determined to see it through with Steve to the end; whether he got his transplant or not; whatever it meant for him afterwards.

“I’m sorry,” Steve found himself saying; his voice quiet and distant.

Bucky’s voice trailed off and he lowered the book; setting it aside as he looked over at Steve with a small frown.

“What? What are you sorry for?”

Steve managed a sad smile.

“If I don’t make it,” he murmured. “I’m sorry if I don’t make it.”

The book was all but thrown to the side as Bucky sat forward and grabbed Steve’s hand; his large fingers feeling warm and comforting on his skin.

“Steve, don’t say that. “You can’t think like that…”

“I know,” Steve replied, “and I’m not. I’m really not. I just need you to know that I’m sorry…if it happens…I never wanted to leave you…”

Bucky’s blue eyes filled with tears in an instant; water welling in the corners and threatening to spill over as Bucky furiously shook his head.

“Naw, Steve,” he whispered. “You aint got nothin’ to be sorry for. Whatever happens, I’m glad I met you and I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”

Steve’s smile widened marginally at Bucky’s accentuated Brooklyn accent coming through as he spoke. Bucky raised Steve’s cold, blue-tinged hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss to his skin.

“No regrets, huh?”

“Not a single one,” Bucky replied.

Despite the coldness in his body, Steve’s heart felt warm.

“I got one,” he admitted.

Bucky frowned, gently.

“What’s that?”

“That I didn’t ask you to marry me while I had the chance.”

Bucky smiled through the tears that spilled down his cheeks.

“Yeah?” he murmured. “Well you can try me after you get outta here.”

Steve huffed a laugh as his eyes fluttered closed again; the effort it took to hold them open seeming like a monumental task. He was so tired; so drained of everything except his determination to fight till his last breath. He was glad to have Bucky there with him if the end was coming up on them.

He didn’t know if he’d fallen asleep or if it was only seconds later when a loud clatter and a flurry of activity made Steve open his eyes again to find Natasha and her team in the room; double doors being flung open and a portable oxygen tank being fitted to the side of Steve’s bed as the wheels were unlocked.

“What’s happening?” he asked; feeling suddenly dizzy and lightheaded.

Natasha’s face appeared above him; copper waves falling about her shoulders like a fiery halo.

“We’ve just heard from UNOS,” she said, speaking fast. “There’s a donor heart right now in a hospital in Newark. We’re taking you into surgery now so you’ll be all ready to go by the time it gets here.”

Despite it’s failing ventricles; Steve’s heart fluttered valiantly in his chest as he watched Natasha prepare to switch his LVAD to a manual pump for transport to the operating room.

“New Jersey?” he said, weakly. “Damn, if I wasn’t so desperate I would honestly just ask to wait for the next one…”

Beside him, Steve heard Bucky’s snort of amusement and it bolstered Steve’s courage. This was it – the moment he’d been waiting for ever since Dr Banner had told him he needed a new heart. The news hadn’t come a minute too soon, but at the same time, everything was happening so suddenly that Steve barely had time to think.

“Bucky?” he said in a panic.

He couldn’t see Bucky anymore with the sheer amount of doctors and nurses that had surrounded him.

“I’m here,” he heard Bucky say. “I’m right here, Stevie.”

That large, warm, comforting hand was on his again; squeezing his fingers gently in reassurance. Steve blinked and there Bucky was again; visible through the sea of bodies.

“You’re still gonna be here when I wake up, right?” Steve asked; only half joking.

“Sure I am, Stevie,” Bucky murmured as he kissed the back of Steve’s hand once again. “Just as long as you do wake up.”

Steve smiled to himself as the trolley started to move; pulling Bucky’s hand away from his.

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Steve replied. “I’m not gonna give up this close to the finish line.”

 

_****_

 

Bucky didn’t know what to do with himself, suddenly left alone in Steve’s empty room after the whirlwind of activity. He was a walking bag of mixed emotions; his veins flooded with relief at the same time as his stomach knotted with anxiety as he thought about Steve’s chances of making it through transplant surgery with the onset of multiple organ failure.

He couldn’t think about that now. Steve was right – they were too close to the finish line to let doubt set in. The chances of a heart becoming available just hours before Steve would have begun to slip away was nothing short of a miracle. He had to believe that Steve would make it.

Bucky found himself wandering the hospital in a daze, finally ending up in the basement corridors that were lined with empty gurneys from the morgue. Nobody really came down here where there was always a cold draft and an empty, hollow feeling encapsulating the concrete walls. Bucky liked it down here because it was quiet and he could sit with a coffee and study or just think.

The surgery would take hours. Technically, he could have watched it from the surgical gallery but after the last time, Bucky didn’t think he’d be able to survive watching Steve be sliced open again, especially not with so much at risk. All the same, the next few hours were going to be torment for him.

“Coffee, boss?”

Bucky stirred at the gentle voice that shook him out of his thoughts and back into the world. Looking up from his knees, he was surprised to find all three of his interns standing there holding coffee cups and armfuls of the vending machines’ best snacks.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asked in surprise. “I thought you’d all be up in the gallery, watching Steve’s surgery.”

America Chavez shrugged as she flopped down on the gurney next to him.

“It’s not like it’s the only transplant surgery that’ll come through this hospital,” she muttered.

Teddy handed Bucky a large takeout cup of coffee as Billy unloaded his armful of tortilla chips and granola bars. Bucky gratefully accepted the coffee as his other two interns climbed onto the gurney beside him.

“You really shouldn’t sacrifice your education to sit with me,” he murmured.

“We’d much rather be here,” Billy insisted.

America muttered something under her breath that gave Bucky the impression that she’d been dragged away from the gallery against her will, but all the same he was glad she was here with the others. He managed a smile as he searched through the various snacks on the gurney and came up with a Snickers.

It was a long time to wait. At least an hour had passed before he tuned into his surroundings again, looking up to find Billy asleep with his head on Teddy’s shoulder while America powered her way through a stack of charts. Bucky smiled to himself and silently mused on the relationship between the two male interns. It was one of the hospital’s lesser known secrets that Dr Kaplan and Dr Altman were seeing each other. The two young men believed they were keeping a lid on it, but Bucky doubted that anyone employed at SHIELD didn’t know about them, even if they all tried not to acknowledge it. He didn’t understand why the two weren’t making it public knowledge, but then it wasn’t his business what his interns did with their personal lives. If they were happy believing that is was still just between them, then that was their right.

He thought about Steve and how fast their own relationship had developed in front of the whole hospital. Bucky was no stranger to gossip and he honestly didn’t care. It hadn’t been his aim to fall for Steve Rogers at all never mind as hard as he did, but the minute he realised he could no longer be objective, he’d come clean to Banner. No matter how many people knew; no matter how much people talked about him, Bucky knew he’d done everything right.

Now he just had to believe Steve would pull through. There was still so much to say; so much to find out and talk about, preferably outside of this god damned hospital. They had come so far but there was still a lot more that Bucky needed to discover at Steve’s side.

He must have drank several cups of coffee; gone through all the snacks and watched his interns come and go as pagers buzzed and called them away to patients on the cardio wing. Time seemed to stand still and race by at the same time; Bucky in limbo as he waited for the news that finally came in the form of Natasha.

She looked exhausted; still in surgical scrubs with a blue cap covering her copper hair. Bucky almost leapt from the gurney when he saw her; jolting Billy awake and surprising the other two interns. His throat felt tight; heart hammering in his chest as he walked towards her as if in a dream; half afraid of what she would tell him.

“How is he?” Bucky croaked. “Is he…?”

“He’s alive,” Natasha said, quietly.

Bucky’s knees almost buckled under his weight as relief flooded him and he sagged forward into Natasha’s arms.

“Oh, thank god,” he whispered.

He held on tight, forgetting to even be surprised when Natasha wrapped her arms around his back and hugged him back just as tightly. Steve was alive. He had beat the odds and made it through the transplant surgery and he was going to be okay.

“He’s in recovery,” Natasha murmured in his ear. “He hasn’t woken up yet.”

Bucky managed to nod. The faster a patient came around after surgery, the more hopeful the surgeons were of a full and successful recovery. Right now, he was just too relieved that Steve was alive that he couldn’t bring himself to think about him not waking up. He wouldn’t think about.

“Can I see him?” he asked.

Natasha nodded.

“Yeah,” she replied. “They’re taking him back to his room now.”

 

****

 

It had been two hours since Steve had come out of surgery and he was still unconscious. His chest was fully bandaged under his hospital gown and he looked smaller and more fragile than ever before, but his skin was pink; his hand, warm under Bucky’s own as his new heart finally pumped blood efficiently around his body. His chest rose and fell steadily; the output from the heart monitor was strong. There was no reason why Steve shouldn’t be awake by now and Bucky was starting to worry.

He sat in the tall-backed chair by Steve’s bed; resting back with his eyes closed and his thumb slowly rubbing over the back of Steve’s hand and he was going to stay there for as long as it took for Steve to open his eyes. Teddy Altman had already volunteered to keep vigil, but Bucky had refused and sent him away again. He wasn’t about to leave Steve’s side now.

“Spring…”

The word was croaked; so quietly that at first, Bucky was sure he’d been hearing things. His eyes flew open and he sat up, looking at Steve in the bed.

“Stevie?” he ventured. “Did you say something, sweetie?”

His heart hammered in his chest as Steve’s eyelids fluttered and his dry lips parted slightly to allow his tongue to dart out in an attempt to moisten them.

“Spring,” Steve repeated.

Bucky frowned, confused.

“What about, Spring?” he asked; feeling Steve’s forehead with the back of his hand for fever.

Slowly, Steve’s eyes cracked open; showing a thin sliver of sky blue.

“It’s the best time for weddings,” Steve murmured.

It took Bucky a few seconds to register Steve’s words before he suddenly started to laugh. Within seconds, he was hysterical as everything finally caught up with him – the worry, the relief, the exhaustion. It took him almost a full minute to reply, wiping away tears as he leaned in to press a small kiss to Steve’s forehead.

“Let’s try a date first, okay?”

Steve smiled softly.

“I guess that’s a good place to start,” he replied.

Bucky laughed gently as he buried his face into Steve’s hair; smoothing it back with his fingers as he pressed soft kisses to the straw-gold strands. He couldn’t remember a time when he felt happier than this moment. Just a few hours ago, Steve had been all but dead and now here he was, alive and recovering faster than anyone he’d ever seen before. If Bucky hadn’t known just how stubborn Steve was he would have mistaken it for a medical miracle rather than the probability of Steve’s determination. Natasha had been right from the very start – Steve really was something else.

“How’s it lookin’?” Steve murmured after a few minutes.

Lifting his head, Bucky sniffled and smiled as Steve gestured weakly to the machines that surrounded him; all monitoring his vital signs.

“I’m not your doctor, Steve,” Bucky reminded him, gently.

“No, but you’re still a doctor and you can read these things better than I can. Just gimme a hint?”

Bucky couldn’t help but laugh as he glanced at the monitors.

“Okay,” he murmured. “Your heart is going strong – you have perfect blood pressure, your tissues are well oxygenated and it looks like your kidneys are functioning much better.”

Steve grimaced.

“Great. Hopefully I can get rid of that pee bag and catheter soon and start peeing into a toilet again like a normal person.”

Bucky grinned at him.

“One step at a time, yeah?”

Steve sighed softly, settling back against the pillows and closing his eyes.

“I can’t wait to take you out for our first real date, Barnes.”

“Oh?” Bucky replied; pulling Steve’s blanket up around his shoulders. “You plannin’ somethin’, Stevie?”

“Maybe I am,” mumbled Steve, “but you’re gonna have to wait a couple weeks till I get outta here to find out.”

Smiling to himself, Bucky leaned forward again and pressed a soft kiss to Steve’s lips.

“You’re worth waiting for, Steve Rogers,” he whispered.

He watched as Steve’s lips curved upwards ever so slightly; his breathing evening out as sleep claimed him once again. He looks peaceful and happy, and Bucky knew he’d be counting the days from here on out until he could finally get to know Steve outside the walls of SHIELD and they could start building something good.

 


	12. Chapter 12

It felt amazing to stand and have a shower again; to feel the hot water running down his skin and washing away weeks of sweat and hospital smell. Not that the nurses didn’t do an amazing job but bed baths could only do so much and it was absolutely no comparison to soaping up his hair with a huge dollop of shampoo and scrubbing himself clean with mint-scented shower gel and a loofah. Steve Rogers was pink all over and squeaky clean when he emerged from the bathroom a full thirty minutes later to the fresh clothes that lay on his neatly-made hospital bed.

Weeks had felt like years on the road to recovery and Steve had almost jumped for joy when Dr Banner had given the order to remove all his cannulas and catheters and various wires. His legs had been shaky; his muscles weak with disuse but he’d forced himself to move, refusing to be bedbound for one more second than he had to. He still wasn’t back to full strength but he was functioning almost normally now and his doctors had decided it was time for discharge.

Steve dressed in his favourite jeans and plaid shirt; packing away his sweater and his beanie before digging out a fresh pair of contact lenses from the bag Sam had brought him from home. Now that Steve had a properly functioning heart, he didn’t feel so cold anymore. It had surprised him to need fewer layers and less blankets; leading him to believe he had a fever until Natasha Romanoff had all but yelled at him that this was perfectly normal. After so long getting by on a poorly functioning body, it was taking a little getting used to being this way.

“Hey,” said a voice from the door; causing Steve to look up with a grin.

“Sam!” he greeted his friend.”

Sam Wilson, still dressed in his nurse’s scrubs, grinned at him as he walked forward and pulled Steve into a tight hug.

“Hey!” Steve warned him; grinning as he hugged Sam back. “Careful with the goods there, Wilson.”

Sam chuckled.

“So, I hear you’re getting out today?” he asked as he stepped back.

Steve couldn’t stop the colour rising to his face as he flushed with happiness.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I heard that rumour too. I’m waiting Banner to come give me the all clear, then I just need my discharge note and meds…and Bucky.”

Sam’s face split into his signature grin.

“That’s right. The delightful Dr Barnes has been telling anybody who’ll listen and plenty more that don’t care that his boyfriend is getting out of hospital today and that you’re taking him on a hot date!”

Steve laughed at him and he nervously rubbed the back of his neck.

“Well, I dunno about a hot date,” he replied. “I’ve been craving a bacon cheeseburger, curly fries, and strawberry milkshake for over a month, so it’s honestly just gonna be a diner.”

“You get a brand new heart and already you’re loading it with cholesterol,” Sam joked.

“Shut up,” Steve replied with a grin; lightly punching Sam on the arm. “I’m not gonna make a habit of it. I just wanna spend my first night outside of the hospital with my boyfriend, eating food I’ve been craving forever.”

Sam’s head tilted to the side, his brown eyes studying Steve for a second.

“You really love saying that, don’t you?”

“What?” Steve asked. “Boyfriend?”

Sam nodded and Steve had to bite his lip in attempt to hide the grin that threatened to take over his whole face in happiness.

“Yep. Damn right, I love saying it.”

His friend just beamed at him; clapping Steve on the shoulder.

“Well, good luck to you,” he said. “You deserve to be happy, Steve.”

“Thanks, Sam,” Steve replied, quietly. “You know you’ll always be my favourite nurse!”

Sam laughed at him as he turned to leave the room.

“No offense, Rogers,” he called over his shoulder, “but don’t take it the wrong way when I tell you I hope I never see you inside this hospital again!”

 

****

 

Bucky Barnes felt like he was walking on air as he sauntered down the hospital corridor towards the surgical floor.  It had been an emotional few weeks for everyone on the road to Steve’s recovery and now it was coming to an end. If truth be told, Bucky thought the SHIELD staff were going to be somewhat happy to see the back of Steven Grant Rogers and his stubborn, blockheaded determination to push his boundaries. Steve might have hindered more than helped his recovery in some cases and had frustrated more than a few nurses in the process.

It didn’t matter now though. Bucky’s shift ended in four hours and then he had three glorious days free to spend with Steve. The feeling was half amazing, half terrifying because the hospital had been their bubble and now they were popping it and taking their relationship to the real world. Bucky was sure that they knew enough about each other to make it work but at the same time, the only dates they’d had so far had been from Steve’s hospital bed, eating food Bucky could pick up from a half mile radius of SHIELD. Crappy TV movies and Monopoly didn’t really count as real dates.

All the same, he was crazy about Steve. Completely and utterly head over heels for those blue eyes and sharp features; that smart mouth and sharp wit. He’d known for quite some time now that Steve was the person he wanted to be with, whatever happened. Despite the fears that gnawed on the edges of his happiness, Bucky was sure they’d make it together, especially after what they’d been through.

“You look chipper this morning!” Natasha observed as she passed him in the corridor on her way out of the OR.

Bucky beamed at her.

“I feel chipper,” he responded. “In just a couple hours time, I get three whole days with my gorgeous boyfriend, and we’re gonna be well away from this place. Not that I don’t love you Nat, but I gotta get Steve on a date that doesn’t involve pill cups as shot glasses.”

Natasha snorted in amusement as she leaned against the wall.

“Yeah well, you better be gentle with him. I worked hard on that heart, I need it to stay in good condition.”

Bucky frowned.

“It’s dinner, Natasha. I think we’ll be okay.”

Natasha shook her head and rolled her eyes with a good-natured smile.

“Whatever, just keep an eye on him. I kinda like the guy, you know.”

“I know,” replied Bucky; giving her shoulder a brief rub.

Natasha was an outstanding surgeon and a great doctor, and Bucky would never forget that she was the one who’d gone into the OR with Steve and helped Dr Banner perform the heart transplant that ultimately saved Steve’s life. He didn’t know how he could ever thank her for it, or for taking exemplary care of Steve post-surgery.

“So where you going tonight?” Natasha asked.

“Nowhere special,” Bucky replied with a grin. “Steve knows this little diner that apparently makes the best bacon cheeseburgers and curly fries in the whole of Brooklyn, so we’re goin’ there and then…we’ll see.”

“A diner?” said Nat, sounding a little disappointed. “I thought you’d take him somewhere fancy at least.”

Bucky laughed and shrugged.

“My fella wants a cheeseburger, so I’m gonna get him the best damn cheeseburger in town.”

“You’re so romantic,” Natasha replied, dryly.

Bucky grinned at her but didn’t bother to fight her on it. The way he saw it, he didn’t care a damn bit if the food was a diner cheeseburger or Steak Tartare in a nice Manhattan restaurant; the point was he was going to be there with Steve and Steve was going to be happy. All Bucky wanted was for his boyfriend to be happy and he was going to do everything in his power to achieve it.

 

****

 

Steve wondered if there was ever a day where Bruce Banner looked actually relaxed. Even with Steve’s heart, lungs, and other internal organs doing just peachy these days, Banner’s brow was still deeply furrowed; his forefinger and thumb occasionally pressing the bridge of his nose to ward off an impending stress headache.

“I can’t stress how important it is not to overexert yourself.” Dr Banner murmured. “I don’t want you doing anything that’s going to make that heart pump blood at an elevated rate, okay? Gentle exercise only – no jogging or running for a bus…”

Steve snorted.

“I’ve never gone for a leisurely jog in my life, Doc,” he muttered.

Banner’s frown deepened.

“You know what I mean, Steve,” he continued. “Nothing that elevates your heart rate for six weeks. That includes…you know…”

Steve stared blankly at him.

“Know what?” he asked; mystified as to what other activity may elevate his heart rate. Surely Banner didn’t think Steve was gonna go skydiving or bungee jumping in the next few weeks post-op.

Bruce Banner looked at him with a hint of desperation.

“I mean that you and Dr Barnes are in a romantic relationship now and this is the first time you’ll have been together outside of SHIELD since you met…”

His hand scratched through the back of his salt-and-pepper hair as he awkwardly looked at the floor. Steve thought Banner looked like a dad trying to give the sex talk to his teenage son and then it hit him like a sledgehammer that Dr Bruce Banner was attempting to do exactly that.

“Oh!” Steve exclaimed in surprise. “Oh…right. That.”

He could feel his own cheeks grow warm was he looked pointedly at his feet. Honestly, Steve hadn’t given sex much thought. It had crossed his mind once or twice on the rare occasion he’d had Bucky all to himself and pulled his boyfriend onto the hospital bed with him; shoving his hands underneath Bucky’s scrub top or tugged at the waistband of the blue drawstring pants as they kissed. His imagination had fleetingly wandered to how it would be to kiss Bucky with fewer clothes on, or in a real double bed with a thick comforter and fluffy pillows, but it had never really ventured into territory any more explicit that that. It came as a bit of a shock that Bruce Banner had thought about it where Steve hadn’t.

“Yeah, don’t worry about that,” Steve continued, still looking at his shoes. “We’re not really thinking about that yet. Totally…not even come up in conversation.”

“Good,” Banner said, quickly. “Just remember the six week benchmark and you can re-evaluate at your check up appointment.”

“Swell,” Steve muttered at the floor.

He barely heard anything else after that; nodding politely at his doctor while his brain replayed the sex part of the conversation. Steve couldn’t believe he’d never really thought about it; how he and Bucky had never talked about it. It was like it had never been a factor in their relationship at all until Banner brought it up.

As he toyed with the aftercare booklet and bid farewell to his surgeon, Steve could feel himself getting nervous. There was so much he and Bucky hadn’t talked about yet. He knew they had time. Now that Steve had a new heart, it felt like they had all the time in the world but somehow he worried that they hadn’t discussed this aspect of their relationship. But they had time. They didn’t have to talk about it tonight and Steve took a deep breath to reassure himself. It wasn’t long now until their first date outside of the hospital and Steve honestly couldn’t wait to see Bucky’s face again.

 

****

 

The day had flown by for Bucky and he was practically bouncing off the walls as he exited the shower room dressed only in clean underwear and towelling his hair dry on his way to his locker. His date night clothes lay neatly folded on the bench and he grinned to himself as he gave his body a spritz of Valentino before reaching for his jeans.

“Ugh…” groaned America Chavez from her prone position on the bench opposite.

Bucky glanced up to find her looking at him from under the crook of her elbow; her arm flung over her face.

“What’s the issue, Chavez?” he asked cheerfully.

America groaned again.

“You are,” she grumbled.

Bucky blinked in surprise.

“What have I done now?” he asked.

“You look like that,” she said, her voice carrying a hint of disgust. “We’re all here working 100 hour weeks and living on granola bars, suffering from malnutrition and pimples and you’re over there looking like you’ve been carved from marble or something. No wonder they call you Dr Model.”

A grin spread over Bucky’s face at the mention of the nickname he’d been stuck with since his internship. Bucky wore it like a badge of honour, knowing that not only did he pay off all his debt before he even qualified, but that he somehow still managed to look pretty okay since he’d become a surgeon. He fastened the button on his jeans and shrugged.

“I apologise, Chavez. I’ll make a mental note to eat more crap and get fat.”

“Would you?” America said, a little more cheerfully. “Awesome, that would make me feel so much better.”

Bucky laughed and reached for his t-shirt.

“So, Dr Barnes? Did they airbrush out the tattoo or what?”

Bucky looked down at his left arm and the red star that was tattooed onto his bicep, high enough up so that his blue surgical scrub top sleeves covered it on a day to day basis. He had a couple other tattoos in far more interesting places, but he grinned at her as he pulled his t-shirt on over his head.

“Yes, America,” he replied. “Yes, they did.”

America Chavez snorted in amusement before settling back down on the bench. Bucky grabbed his jacket and his bag, and shut his locker door before heading out to find Steve’s room.

His boyfriend was surrounded by farewell cards, flowers, balloons, and sweets that Steve was hastily trying to shove into his small backpack; looking utterly bewildered.

“They just kept bringing me stuff,” Steve said desperately as he tried to fit a box of glazed ring Krispy Kreme into the bag. “The nurses…the interns…I can’t possibly carry all this with me!”

Bucky grinned as he stepped into the room and took his own bag from his shoulder.

“I’m sure I can get some of this stuff in here,” he said, gently; reaching for the stack of cards.

He was still getting used to Steve being upright and in regular clothes. He looked gorgeous – the blue in his shirt really bringing out his eyes and his straw blond hair swept back from his face. Steve huffed heavily as he gazed around at all his gifts.

“I don’t even understand why they gave me all this,” Steve continued. “There were like…fifty nurses in my room. Teddy hugged me. He actually hugged me.”

Bucky laughed and paused from packing up all the cards and candy in order to walk over and pull Steve towards him; holding him gently by his shoulders.

“They’re gonna miss you,” he replied. “The nurses, my interns, Natasha…even Banner. You’ve been in here so long and they’ve been there through everything you’ve been through. They were rooting for you every step of the way and they’re gonna miss you when you walk out that door today.”

A smile crept onto Steve’s face as he looked up at Bucky and shifted his weight from one foot to another.

“They really like me?”

“They adore you,” Bucky insisted. “And I adore you. So shut up, stop bein’ a punk; let’s get this stuff packed away and then go get that damn cheeseburger.”

Steve grinned at him and nodded.

It had to be strange for the guy, Bucky thought. Steve really had been one of the best patients in the whole hospital; his respect for the nurses earning him extra brownie points. They really were going to miss him.

“So...uh…Dr Banner said something to me today.”

Bucky looked up to find Steve actively avoiding his gaze as he handed Bucky items to put in his backpack.

“Oh?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah, it was kinda something I’d never even thought about before he mentioned it, but once he said it, it’s sorta all I could think about…”

“Really?” said Bucky with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, not the only thing I could think about, obviously!” Steve replied; flustered, “but he said it and now it keeps crossing my mind because it’s something we never really discussed and I’m maybe freaking out a little…”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Bucky murmured.

Straightening up, he reached for Steve’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“What’s the matter, Steve?” he asked. “What’s got you all worked up?”

Steve’s blue eyes stopped staring at the floor and finally fixed on him as Steve took a deep breath.

“He told me that I couldn’t partake in any activity for the next six weeks that would elevate my heart rate too much, including but not exclusively…”

“Sex,” Bucky finished for him as the penny dropped. “Is that it? Is that what you’re worried about?”

Steve bit his lip.

“It’s just something we never talked about and…”

“Steve,” Bucky interrupted, gently; stepping close and smoothing Steve’s hair back from his face. “The only thing I wanna do with you right now is take you for a cheeseburger. After that, I wanna take you home, maybe watch a movie on the couch and then kiss you goodnight. This is not a conversation we need to have right now. We can talk about it in six weeks, or six months…damn, we can even talk about in six years if that’s what you really want, but there is no need to talk about it today. Right now, I wanna spend time with you. I wanna wrap my arms around you and feel how strong your heartbeat is; I wanna go to sleep next to you and wake up with you and have oddly inappropriate lunch dates at ridiculous hospital hours, and none of it has to involve sex. Okay?”

Steve blinked at him slowly; his lips curving into a smile that held a substantial amount of mischief.

“We’re good with kissing though, right?”

Bucky laughed.

“Absolutely. All the kissing.”

Steve grinned, reaching out and pulling Bucky in by the hem of t-shirt.

“Good, ‘cause I think I wanna do a lot of that this evening.”

“Anything you want,” Bucky murmured as Steve’s lips met his own in a soft, confident kiss.

He could feel Steve’s smile against his mouth; his breath as he exhaled a happy sigh.

“Should we go get that cheeseburger now,” Bucky asked.

“Yes,” Steve murmured; his fingers flexing in Bucky’s hand.

Backpacks laden with gifts and flowers in their arms, they left SHIELD behind and stepped out into the warm evening air, both ready for their first date of many and the start of a beautiful future.

 

 

THE END


End file.
